I’ll be racing the Tupper Lake Half Ironman this coming weekend. As I have done for the past 10 years, I’ll be camping beside the T-zone (near the “no camping” sign that the local police waive for race weekend), setting up camp around dusk (9 pm).
Who is else is going ? Hopefully I can hold my own with Stefan Kusurelis from NYC, who will no doubt hammer me severely, but I will try and give him some semblance of competitition :-). Here is our “battle from last year”
If you want an idea of what kind of shape Stefan is in this year, I rode w/ him to Bear Mountain on Saturday. We covered the 100 miles in under 6 hours, including a flat and a broken chain. And he was on his steel behemoth looking nice and smooth. Thank god he’s big enough to draft.
…I have no hope againts Stefan… I heard about that monster 400 mile weekend you guys rode in the Catskills. I’m toast but I will try to put up a good fight. Heck, the guy was on the 35-39 Podium at Ironman Arizona…who am I fooling !
What should I say? I’m just cracking up here reading your posts. i didn’t even know that one_lap was riding with me last saturday. How funny is this? We should introduce with our screen names.
I’m really looking forward to Tupper. My swim will be slower this year, so perhaps we can push ourselves on the bike a bit?
Dev, had I known last year that you were so close on the run, I guess I would have given up. It’s funny how mental that stuff is.
Perhaps we can meet up at the carbo dinner?
I saw Stefan at IM-AZ…and um…well, let’s just say I wish you LOTS of luck! Oh, and looking at the splits you might be disappointed to know that Stefan’s been working on his run this year so I wouldn’t expect a “sluggish” 1:33 from him!
No kidding… I think Stefan will be spitting me out like a bad habit after his Kenny Souza like 540 mile weekend of riding in the Catskills !
Looking forward to seeing you dudes at “Woodstock at Tupper Lake”.
I can’t go to LP to train the day after Tupper, but I will be in LP the following weekend (July 1-3) for, “Tri Tour Lake Placid…a 6 stage 3 day free training event” for mileage junkies, including the first annual Slowtwitch Whiteface Mtn Uphill TT. Details will be announced later this week on this forum :-).
How are you guys feeling for Tupper Lake. My quads still feel like wood after racing Muskoka last weekend. I always feel like I ran the Boston Marathon after that race. This morning, I decided that it would be wise to give in and surrender to two of the things that triathletes fear most:
Rest. Cars. Fat.
I already feel slow and fat after a morning without training (albeit a bit sore still from Muskoka).
Stefan, you better not be tapering for Tupper Lake. I hope you are piling on a 100K week of running to go with the 540mile weekend of biking
By the way, for all you 40-44 year old studs, Barry “The KonaExpress” Dmitruk will be back to lay down the smack. Last year he was top 10 overall (killled us all on the bike) and seems to be biking and running stronger than ever, just a few months short of turning 45. He has a Joe Boness like season lined up with three Ironmans, a couple of half Ironmans and marathon (already ran 2:56). This guy is the real deal Clydesdale stud. He’ll be camping at the Tupper Lake Woodstock zone.
The new course is now legit 13.1 miles. Last year only around 4 or so were under 1:30 for the run. Gone are the days when you had 25 sub 1:25 studs. The old course was also favourable for running fast times as you could open up the tank and go full tilt down the final 1.5 miles of downhill. I’ve run a few sub 5:30 miles on that section before. Now that downhill is early in the race, so you can’t really open it up and go all out as you have 7 miles to run after the huge downhill section. Now, you end the race with a mind numbing 2 mile straightaway before making a final right turn before doing the final 400 m or so to the finish. That section can be really tough mentally and slow physically. A lot different than the old course which was “mentally favourable”.
No, I’m just poking fun–it was a legit 13.1 last year–Paul is right–no more skipping from mile 11 to 12 in 3 minutes. So, it’s not any longer than it was last year–let’s hope.
My gut feel is that the new course from last year was ~ 400 m long (ie 1.5 min long at just under 90 min pace). It seems weird that there were so few sub 90 min runners in the field. In any event, the long straightaway in the last few miles seemed like it went on forever.
