Kristen Marchant- athletic escapades: Timberman 70.3

I was able to travel to this race with another pro, Cindy Lewis, which made life a lot easier, not having to worry about directions (we had a GPS) and having some company for the long drive to New Hampshire. After a 12 hour trip we arrived Friday night in the town of Alton. If you are ever travelling to New Hampshire, don’t go to Alton- there is nothing there. Also, under no circumstances whatsoever should you stay at the River View Motel- despite what the false reviews on expedia tell you, you will be lacking hot water and lights, and those will be the least of your worries.

don't stay here. just don't do it.

Saturday provided some unwanted adventure as I went out for my morning run and encountered a less than friendly dog that was not contained in his yard. I survived, my clothes did not.

not supposed to have holes here...

Timberman was my first actual IM branded race, not that it means much other than more people, both pros and age groupers. We arrived very early at the race site Sunday morning so that we could park there and not 20km away, so I had lots of time to chill before the race started.

I had a bit of a mental ‘reset’ before coming into this race. Somewhere along the way this season my thoughts had become a lot more self-defeating, which was sucking the fun out of racing. So I really wanted to come into this race with more confidence and positive thoughts. In previous races I somehow got it into my head that I was the worst swimmer in the world and should just try to get on anyone’s feet that I could, although that was quite erroneous thinking. This may stem from the fact that when I swim with the varsity swim team I actually am the worst swimmer, but swimming with triathletes is not the same thing. So with this in mind I lined up at the swim start right by Rachel Joyce (one of the top swimmers in the sport) with the intention of trying to get on her feet. Go big or go home right? For the first 25m or so I was in her wake, but not surprisingly she started to pull away. Even though I lost her feet, the extra effort put in at the beginning of the swim meant that almost everyone else was behind me and I had a really clean swim, no violence. About 400m in I caught up to 2 people and decided to swim with them as we turned the corner. Since the next 900m was directly into the sun I thought it best to let someone else do the sighting while I chilled on her feet, rather than me pulling her and getting blinded by the sun. Once that stretch was over and we turned to head back to shore I pulled up a bit to push the pace a little more. We ended up exiting the water just over a minute behind Rachel Joyce and 1 other person, which for me is an outstanding swim (in comparison, I was 3min back from the leaders at Challenge Knoxville in May).

Lake Winnipesaukee. we swam somewhere in here

T1 went very smoothly and quickly, as I had planned out my route through transition to my bike prior to the race (and therefore was faster than the other two I was with).

The bike course was decently challenging with some good climbs and descents. Angela Naeth caught me fairly early on but was evidently way out of my league as I could not stay with her. I did stay with Heather Jackson when she caught me for several kilometers, but she gradually pulled away and I basically rode solo for the rest of the ride. I passed one person but two people caught me in the latter part of the ride as I was fading from the effort put out to begin with. Definitely something to work on but overall was not a bad ride.

I entered the run in 6^th place and was feeling pretty good to start off with. The run course was fairly challenging with some good steep hills as well as long gradual hills. About 8km in my quads started to cramp up and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it. Still relatively new to the distance, I have not figured out a good fuelling strategy for the run as my stomach seems to be very sensitive; each race seems to be a new test to see what I can handle. So far flat coke is winning, although I’d like to find something more tolerable. The second loop was definitely a struggle and I ended up getting caught by one person with about 5km left to go. I tried to go with her but wasn’t able to sustain it so ended up in 7^th overall. Not a bad day considering the field of women that showed up.

Overall it was a great race- some people have complained about the conditions of the roads but those sections were really not that long and anyone with two eyes and a brain can navigate the potholes without too much trouble. The volunteers were awesome and they had ice-cream at the post-race food tent, so you can’t really ask for much more ;) (apparently ice cream is REALLY popular in New Hampshire. It’s like the Tim Hortons of Canada. Definitely a good thing J ) And I made some pretty nice sand castles at the beach waiting for them to open up the parking lots. :P