Sports News
Mark Patton: How to win a race against time
August 29, 2006 12:00 AM
Kobe Bryant won't play me one-on-one. Payton Manning will never throw me a deep ball. And there's little chance that Greg Maddux will ever pitch me BP.
But I can line up against Andrew Maxwell, a local 21-year-old with Olympic aspirations.
You've got to love the Santa Barbara Triathlon, where even a 52-year-old with creaky knees can race against the athletic elite.
Maxwell actually got a five-minute jump on me, thanks to the staggered way they started the age groups at Sunday's sprint-course race. He was out of the water just 21/2 minutes after I had made my own splashing entrance.
So yeah, I wouldn't have caught him even if I were Mark Spitz. And you were more likely to call me Mark Spits when I emerged from the ocean with a few gallons of sea water in my gut.
I was barely halfway through the six-mile bike ride, with a two-mile run to go, when Maxwell was taking his winning bows. But that old clichè is true: For many of us, it is more about the journey.
The triathlon beckons not only the young and the restless, but also the old and the breathless thanks to training groups such as Momentum 4 Life, Moms In Motion, the Santa Barbara Triathlon Club and Team In Training.
I was one of several hundred baby boomers who raced Maxwell on Sunday. More than 43 percent of the 616 finishers of the sprint-course race were age 40 or older. The percentage (39.4) was nearly as high in Saturday's long course.
Our own coed training group ranged from an 8-year-old girl all the way up to us 50-somethings. It included my 23-year-old daughter Megan and wife Theresa.
We gathered on 12 Saturday mornings -- running, riding and swimming under the watchful eyes of coaches Eric Schmitz, Pete Engle and Dr. Bob Wilcher.
I had to wonder if they added the doctor for my sake.
The group helped get me through the summer. We stuck together even when it was a physical chore. We were strung all throughout the hills of Montecito on a ride to Carpinteria one morning when 25-year-old Beth O'Connor back-tracked, just to make sure us plodders were OK.
We felt a little guilty after telling Beth that we were going to turn
back early: We wanted to make it back before sunset.
Injuries kept a few of our teammates off the starting line. But
JudiAnn Dutcher took her cue from Maxwell, who raced on Sunday despite
a nasty bike crash during Saturday's long course. JudiAnn, who got
some road rash of her own while roller-blading last week, wasn't
screaming for joy when she pulled on her wet suit.
I felt my own agony late in Sunday's race, content to follow a
young woman to the finish line. But then I heard my Momentum teammate,
Claudia Luddemann, encouraging me from the sidelines to beat her
down the stretch.
I did just that with one last push, reveling in my apparent victory
-- until it hit me later that I had actually started five minutes
before that woman.
But that wasn't what my summer quest was about, anyway. I'd dropped
65 seconds off my previous best, as well as a few pounds.
Maybe I didn't actually catch that woman -- let alone Andrew Maxwell.
But I did gain on me.
Mark Patton's column appears on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
E-mail: mpatton@newspress.com |
