LECHTANSKI.NET

Six months of waiting. Four months of training. One day of driving. Three hours, seven minutes of racing. June 8, 2008, I Escaped from Alcatraz.

I had a goal time (3:15) and a dream time (3 hours). I missed my dream time by seven minutes. Holy Shit!

The Swim
A mile and a half across the San Francisco Bay. The three prisoners who came closest to escaping from Alcatraz are assumed to have drowned before they reached the mainland. I, on the other hand, made the swim in 41 minutes.

We got up at 4:20. Sunday morning traffic in SF is minimal, but this morning, there were plenty of cyclists making their pre-dawn way to the race. Gavin and I rode our bikes down to the race transition area to catch a bus to the ferryboat landing. We milled about the dock for an hour or so, getting body marked, hanging out in porta-potties and trying to talk about politics to keep ourselves from getting too anxious.

About 7 we left the dock. Gavin started impressing everyone with his Sean Connery impersonation from The Rock. The line about the prom queen… but at 8 a.m., the air horn blew and 1800 competitors started piling off the boat. A perfectly good boat. Because the tide was moving out, swimming the bay was essentially like swimming across a huge river. This made the mile and a half a very fast swim, and while at times I felt like I wasn’t moving, before I knew it a wave picked me up and buried both of my hands in sand. I had arrived! So, I got up and started running down a chute of hundreds of people cheering and leading me to my bike. It was awesome.

The Bike
San Francisco’s pretty hilly, by the way. We had driven the bike route the day before in the air conditioned comfort of our rental SUV, and I was fully daunted by the prospect of surviving the ride. It’s basically made up of continuous uphill grades with only a couple of extreme down hill stints. In other words: lots of up with not so much down. And to make it worse, every downhill stretch is followed by a sharp turn. This totally kills your momentum.

Since the ride is 18 miles out and back, those extreme downhill parts on the way out are the extreme uphill parts on the way back. While pedaling up the worst of the hills, I was with a few other riders, joking and commiserating about the pain. I discovered the combination of joking and complaining is a great way to pass the time while climbing steep hills. Who knew?

I managed the 18 miles in 1:05. I felt great. The last few miles into the transition were either downhill or flat, and I was flying. My Softride is a pretty fast bike. So, even coasting, I was passing people.

The Run
My two primary brick workouts prior to the race left me with shin cramps (these hurt precisely as much as they sound). Here? Nothing. I had to work out the cycling stiffness, but my legs felt great.

As Gavin pointed out, this race had just about every possible running terrain: concrete, loosely packed dirt, packed dirt, bricks, wood chips, trails, sand, wood steps, stairs, sand stairs.

I settled in for eight miles. I passed a bit, got passed a bit and occasionally got stuck behind people walking ridiculously slow up some stairs. Halfway through the run, we hit the beach for a while and then headed up the infamous sand stairs. The sand stairs are 400 uneven logs leading up a sandy hill. At the top of the stairs, I had four more miles to look forward to.

The last two miles were tough. I had kept pace with a few people and I noticed a few others falling away. Eventually, I could see the huge inflatable finish line. The last mile, I turned it on. With everything I had left, I poured it on. Turning the last corner, I was pretty sure I heard Barb, Elaine, Tawsha and J yell, but I was focused on breathing and form. I finished strong at an hour and twelve minutes.

3:07.

It was 11 a.m. and I had been up for almost eight hours. I Escaped from Alcatraz without a hitch. Now I just had to wait for the photos. And then there is the video.