Jerry outruns Frank KJ at Timberman

It was man-o-man at the Timberman Half-Ironman this weekend with Frank KJ and Jerry DZ representing the NETT troops out there. Frank took lead on the swim and the bike but in the end Jerry pulled off a strong run to run away with the top NETT honors. "It was a very competitive field with lots of pros and some amazing run splits," Frank reports.

The REAL question was how hard did Jerry have to kick to catch the world renowned Karen Smyers, who finished one spot behind him? For more on that, let's go to JERRY's Report on the race:

Saw Frank K's and Dave's comments on e-mail/blog so
figured I'd add my perspective (since I'm on vacation
up here in NH and drinking a beer on the deck of the
place we're staying while waiting for my son to wake
up from his nap).

Timberman is a great event if you want to experience
triathlon at it's finest. The expo/festival has really
caught on and the Gunstock ski area venue adds to the
atmosphere of the whole weekend's activities.

Saturday, stiff wind pushing large whitecaps across
the water for my 73yr old father's sprint triathlon
swim. He earned his stripes just by making it through
that; he kept disappearing from sight in between
swells. Since he started in the very last wave he was
the absolute last person out of the water (as a
volunteer that day, one of my jobs was to follow
behind the last swimmer out of the water and through
the transition- kind of funny that person was my
father). The colonel (dad) moved up on the bike and
cruised one of the fastest 3 miles he's run in quite
some time (he's still puzzled how he did that esp.
since he had his knee replaced less than 2yrs ago!).

Myself and others were real psyched the next day broke
with way less wind and warmer temps. In fact I even
felt a little guilty about what the guv (dad) had to
endure the day before. Anyways, for this race I
entered myself in the ~40 person, elite age group wave
instead of my ~240 person 40-44 AG wave. So despite
the reports of a close race between Frank (and a few
other non-NETTers) in reality I was always
approximately 20 min ahead because I started 20min
ahead.

Never having had much luck previously in the distance
triathlon events I had some specific goals and ended
up reaching a 1/2 IM PR by taking a conservative
approach to set myself up for a good finishing run.
Despite calm looking waters the swim was actually
quite rough. Got through that and endured a weird
mishap on the bike where I pulled my cleat out of the
pedal and basically crashed without actually hitting
the deck. Once I got into a nice rythm on the bike I
started steadily, slowly catching other elites and a
few pros on the bike. Started to feel a little energy
depletion towards the end of the bike and ended up
swallowing 4 power gels in the last 20 miles of the
bike. Came out onto the run feeling pretty good and
did my best to find the 7min pace I was looking for.
There's no way I couldn't have a strong start as I had
a 40+ person cheering squad composed of my family and
step/family located right as I came out onto the run
course! Really helped to have them there. Toledo Joe
was out on the run course and 2/3 of the way through
the run I got a split from him that told me I was
close to target pace. Run was the first time I was
able to see and high 5 Frank K as we passed. I didn't
high 5 Karen Smyers but she's always pleasant enough
even though I'm sure that was more like a casual day
on the race course for her. Probably explains why I
caught her on the run (she started 2min in front of me
in the pro wave) Crazy Dave. Anyways, I suffered on
the 3rd leg of the 1/2M run but was able to hammer the
4th/ last leg (~3miles) of the run to acheive my goal,
1:30 run split. Real pleased with my 4:47 flat race
time.

I'm also going to lay claim, along with Joe, to a top
10 finish to the beer tent. My dad, step-mom were just
behind, definitely in the top 20.

Saw/chatted with a myriad of other NE/NY (almost elite
MM; JS ;-))area athletes who participated in what has
become a national/international level competition.

OK, son woke up, my rambling's are done. See y'all
around. -Jerry



As Jerry mentioned, Saturday was the Timberman Sprint and Jerry’s dad took top-honors in the 70-74 age-group. His goal was 2:15 but in true De Zutter style he hammered the 5K run to finish in 2:08. Congratulations Jim!

All results at