Legitimate

No, I couldn't re-tilt the photo at left, so excuse the oddity. TJ Tollakson came in 7th yesterday, making him my best placed male FantasyTri athlete (I swerved at the last minute and benched eventual 4th place finisher Richie Cunningham for no-show Leon Griffin—didn't I say his website didn't say anything about Florida 70.3? Shucks). For a while during the race I thought I'd made a canny decision, picking the only $4100 Tollakson for my team, since he came off the bike almost 7 minutes in front, after a bike split that distanced the pack by almost 10 minutes. He got around in under 2 hours, which is rare air for 56 miles on your own. TJ's effort would place him in the ballpark of professional cyclists competing in long time trials. Toss in the fact that the Florida 70.3 bike course is by no means a straightforward affair: it isn't pancake flat and swoops and curves out in the orchards beyond Orlando.

TJ put in the effort to win his way on Sunday, for which I admire him. After a disappointing race in Galveston where he bided his time, it seems he decided to go back to his trump card, the bike. As playing that card often does, he paid for his gamble by blowing up in the Disneyworld heat. Still, he played it. As an athlete whose strong suit is also the bike (can I really say that any more? I feel more and more middle of the pack these days on the bike) I admire the gamble Tollakson made. On a few days in triathlon the cyclists have their days: Normann's had two, TJ's had one at Eagleman, Jordan's had a bunch until he showed us that, actually, he's a pretty damn solid runner, too. Triathlon is drifting towards a conservative style of racing: sit in the pack on the swim, sit in the line on the bike, save it for the run, so it's nice to see someone still making triathlon about his individual strength.

Barriers

(Sorry about missing Monday, folks...I tried to publish an old post but it gave itself the date on which I wrote it and is now buried in the older posts)

Early morning and the cops are clearing the street of debris; the fence guys have come along and slowly built a wall a few feet back from the curb; they've butted up the feet of the sections and zip-tied them together; soon there's a channel 30 meters wide and the street has that abandoned feeling usually reserved for very late at night.

Sadly, no race rolled past my door this morning (my front door is that grey archway 2/3 down the block), although I have to confess I felt that tingle one feels walking past the finish line on race morning, the tingle that says maybe, maybe...

I've raised my arms at the finish only a few times in my career, and never at a race bigger than something local, but when you see Phillipe Gilbert do it on the cobbles of the Cauberg, or Crowie do it (with a sharp flex added for good measure) under the palms at Kona, something in your chest wants to raise those arms, too.

We've all done it, I'm guessing, when we knew no one lurked nearby to see us. Pretending to win goes back to our first solo experiences with games, when we hit towering home runs into phantom Fenway lights, or sank countless Bird-esque jumpers that almost touched the rafters of the old Garden. Now we crest a hill after a long climb along and raise our arms just to see what it feels like, and the old magic still flows.

For me, seeing a crew set up barriers along a set of curbs sets those dreams of magic alight. You see yourself, alone after a long breakaway, or running down Boylston street by yourself (Oh those beautiful foreshortened shots of Boylston Street, where the second place runners seem so close, where their dreams of coming back seem plausible for only a second!), or realizing that your pursuers won't make up the distance you've put into them over 140.6 miles.

You enter the barriers at the finishing chute.

Gilbert

Alexander

































Cheruiyot