By Todd Madson, (C) 2004 - all rights reserved. All photos by the folks at Action Sports int'l except for the first two at the top.

News Update:
I've since come to learn that I did the entire triathlon with my right front brake shoe rubbing against the rim of my wheel and for several rides after the triathlon. The wind, traffic and spectator noise blocked this. I discovered all of this at mile 97 of a century ride on July 29th! Good grief! The bike shop was a little overzealous in getting the shoe real close to the rim apparently.

Well, I did the triathlon this morning (July 17, 2004) and there were a couple of very interesting things that occurred.

I pondered back to January where my wife and I had joined Weight Watchers and so far she's lost 62 pounds and I've lost 43 as of this writing. I'm finally under clydesdale weight though the pictures don't really show it (194 at this writing). My tri-partners are fit, in shape guys and they definetely were great.

The weight loss made a huge difference on the bike but I'm still in process of losing and will be for some time. The funny thing is that my biking jerseys are mostly laughably large now and keep blousing up with the air flow making me look like the biggest guy in the peloton. But, I'll definetely be using this triathlon as a point to compare next year. Hopefully if I can lose another 30-40 pounds I will be able to do this again to and we'll see how I do versus this year. I should thank Corky Larson for her leadership and encouragement at our WW group. I likely wouldn't have done this without her (and my wife's) encouragement.

All told, I had a very positive experience. The night before I was kind of a wreck and had a hard time sleeping.

My bike and helmet all numbered and ready.

After tossing and turning a number of times I just tried to get the best sleep that I could being that it wasn't likely I was going to get the most slumberous rest.

My shoes and outfit also awaited the morning. Oh boy. I pondered if the pro participants had the same jitters or not.

The day started with a guy landing on the beach with a red white and blue steerable parachute while the national anthem was sung and then three world war II era T-6 trainers flew over in formation while the helicopters of NBC Sports hovered nearby. Then the pro swimmers got started. But let's get to what happened with me.

Our swimmer (Peter Knapp) was already out of the water and running towards me with the tracking chip they use to determine your start and finish times.

Peter Knapp kicking butt and taking names in the swimming leg...

Probably looking for a towel really quickly. Actually, looking for ME to get me the chip.

I was finishing a power bar when he ran over, put the tracking chip they use to compute your time around my left ankle and said "GO!" and tons of people around me were yelling "GOGOGO!" as well.

At first I told myself I was going to be reasonable at first and not go all out. The big crowd and all of these screaming people threw that out the window.

I run out of the transition area in my cycling cleats (not as easy to do on cement as you might think, but I used my bike as a fulcrum to sort of keep balance....

I clip in and the next thing I know I'm cruising about 25 miles an hour with hundreds of screaming, clapping and stomping people on either side of me. I start hammering like a complete idiot and accelerate further.

Then there's all of these people with cameras taking pictures of me, ME for heavens sake. What's that about?

I look like I'm out for a casual saturday morning spin instead of a full-on speedfest....

I later find out that there's a firm that's been hired to take photos of the athletes in order to later capitalize on the need for pictures and the pictures are really nicely done but fairly expensive. You can even get a Wheaties cereal box with your picture on it in a lucite container!

Then, the funniest thing starts happening, a helicopter starts following me. Weird. If you saw a guy in a mostly red biking outfit/ helmet on a yellow Giant TCR bike on NBC-TV sports today or one of the local news channels, that was me.

I start settling down to a more reasonable pace since I realize if I keep this up I'll crack sooner rather than later and start into the main part of the course. I eventually get to the long northward run up West River Parkway and start trying to hold my speed steady.

I'm trying to keep my pace reasonable but not too slow - sort of a nice in-between pace. I'm keeping between 18-23 mph most of the time - my ideal goal would be to keep this under 1.5 hours since it is the first one I've done, and the ideal would be about an hour and 20 minutes + or - a few.

I'll take a few hills at a bit over 30 miles an hour to use the momentum to fly up the next.

While on the ride I came INCHES from hitting a squirrel - I could count every hair on his head (and he probably wondered what the big yellow and red thing was flying at him) but luckily I dodged him and went onwards.

I get to the Franklin Avenue bridge and cross over to East River Parkway and head south. One of the most enjoyable aspects of this is I was able to ride in city streets with no car traffic - the whole road was closed off to cars just for the triathlon riders.

Further on I pass a water station and grab a bottle on the fly and take a bunch of swigs and chuck it in the bottle disposal half a mile down the road which took some of the strain off my camelbak which was crammed with water, tools, spare tubes, tire levers, energy bars and GU gels. Problem was, it wasn't easy to grab this stuff on the move. Next time I'll have a better method....

Some people with some very expensive carbon fiber bikes with carbon fiber wheels pass me - at one point I was at 26 miles an hour and a woman went by me like I was standing still. Shocking but I learned the funny "broken respirator sound" that carbon wheels make under power. "I gotta gets me some of that...." But I noticed that most of the pure triathlete types were using aerobars. Here's some pics of the type of bikes I saw on the route.....

Carbon bikes, aerobars and carbon wheels were popular for some on the ride portion of the tri..

Some rode flat barred commuter bikes with race wheels....

Still others rode knobby tired mountain bikes - probably for the challenge....

Riding in your swimming suit - not recommended - no padding and soaking wet. Ow.

I learned that aerobars would be a good investment if I get into this a bit further, not to mention fancier wheels but a lot of the very fastest people were really tiny skinny women with 4% body fat using aerobars. Same with the guys. Just wait - I've got more weight to lose but I'm going to ramp up the speed too.

At about eight or nine miles in, a faux Tour de France "Devil Guy" (a german man named Didi Senft follows Tour de France stages dressed as the devil, complete with pitchfork to exhort the riders as they pass by) prances up and down and urges me to go faster. I laughed and continued. (I think it was this guy actually:)

The faux devil guy was exhorting people to move faster along the course at one point.

Every half block there's personnel from the tri among spectators yelling and jumping and screaming and clapping. Some of these people were just ordinary people in their neighborhoods, others were people who obviously journeyed a bit to see this.

I eventually get to the Ford Avenue bridge and cross back over to Minnehaha parkway and continue westward towards the Lake Harriet turnaround where we head back to Lake Nokomis where this all ends. As I pass near Cedar some guy yells "GO RED GUY!" (heh).

I keep going and after a while I get so focused at the task at hand that I start tuning out the scenery. I start passing some riders and continue onwards. I start instinctively hammering out of the saddle on the uphills - I get to one particularly annoying hill (50th street at Lyndale) and just do it.

I look down and my heart rate monitor is beeping furiously at 103% at the top of the hill. Wow. I knew the HR would be high...

Working hard - hammering fast - heart rate at maximum....

I continue onward and there's a slight incline at the top there's a really long downhill with another uphill behind it. I hammer downhill so that my momentum will carry me up the next one. Perfect - then a long incline that leads to a long downhill.

I get to Lake Harriet which is the turnaround point for the whole thing and notice my odometer hit 20 miles exactly at 1 hr and 7 minutes. Good.

It's not long until the finish at this point and I start to increase the pace even though I'm tiring.

Me Near Lake Harriet banking back to Minnehaha Parkway and the finish at Lake Nokomis.

Not long now. But I'm running out of steam and if I'd been able to get at one of my Gu's I'd be doing a little better....but if I stop I lose time....do I continue or? I continue. I probably should have taped a GU to my handlebar for that moment....

I get a bit of a second wind and pass the next water station and decide to just blow by them since the end of this thing is just a couple miles away. The way it concludes is a bit confusing though since it goes right past the side of the finish line, then curves back sharply.

I head down West Nokomis Parkway and at the very bottom I have to do a super sharp U turn and hammer straight up to the finish.

All of a sudden, people start walking across the road - ACK! The barricades are a bit further up. People are walking across the road with kids in strollers and dogs and I don't know what all - I continue further and I'm glad because if it doesn't end soon I'll be toast. My HR monitor says my average HR was 177 for this ride and my max was 186! Good grief. Pegged at 90+% for more than an hour.

I hammer up the road out of the saddle a bit and people are going nuts and I feel like Lance Armstrong on the Champs Elysees. I can't describe how cool that was.

Getting towards the finish it started getting fairly crowded with bikes - I even saw a woman fall right off of her bike and into the tarmac. Yow. Running on concrete with cycling cleats is pretty difficult - dismounting and trying to run might be more painful than you expected....

Crowded finish line for the cycling leg

Ditto. More people jockeying for a fast finish.

Still More finishers approach the finish line

I get to the finish, dismount and RUN the bike back over to the transition area (I didn't fall), give our runner Tim the chip around my ankle and I'm done right around 10:30 in the morning.

Tim looking like he's contemplating particle physics or suffering like a dog....

Tim does two laps around the lake (harder than it sounds). He said that he was struggling the last two miles and thought he might not break the 70 minute barrier (his actual quote "the run kicked my butt"). But he said it was fun although more training would have been a benefit.

Tim finishes. We're DONE!

Tim hits the finish line!

Afterwards there was a large free food/drink area for participants and volunteers to replenish themselves. One of the nicest things was giant fans blowing cold misted water on us. It was in the high 80s that day at the tri so it felt damn good. Free powerade, water, Energice (remember icees from when you were a kid? They're like that but in a "energy replacement form" but tasted darn good) and pasta and chips and anything you could think of.

We took tenth place (out of 17 places) for team category "Corporate Male" in the relay teams ..

Peter's Stats:
-Our swimmer Peter did an impressive 23 minutes and 28 seconds - he's actually somewhat well known on the east coast for triathlete swimmers.

Todd's Stats:
-Myself on the bike did 1 hour and 26 minutes over 25.8 miles (including the runout/run-in segments- the official bike distance was 24.8 miles sans run-in/out).

This was about an 18.1 mph average speed, I initially held a 20+ mph average for the first hour or so and started fading a bit - I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. It's also the fastest average speed over a distance ride I've had all season. That's great.

Tim's Stats:
-Our runner Tim did 1 hr and 4 minutes - he was doing about 10 minute and 29 second miles towards the end.

Total time was 2 hrs, 58 minutes, 13 seconds.

It was a blast, I'd do it again in a second. For me to place at my age and still losing weight I'm pretty pleased. But I know I can do better next time. And yeah, I'm hoping there is a next time - I've got a time to beat now.

So that's the news.

Thanks for reading. -Todd Madson, race number 324, 7/18/04.

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