Big Congrats to Paul Miller, Frank KJ and Jerry De Zutter for their fantastic performances at the FirmMan Mass 08 Half-Ironman Distance Triathlon in a scorching heat. Paul crushed the field in a convincing 4:32. Especially impressive given his being 84th coming out of the water--there's hope for us LAND LUBBERS! Paul's half-marathon split was a smoking 1:25 off the bike. Ouch.
Frank KJ was second master and ninth overall in 4:51, with a strong 2:43 on the bike and a swim five minutes faster than the race winner's! Nice work Frank!
Jerry wound up 12th overall in 4:57 and fourth master. Of special note: Jerry's bike split of 2:35 was 6th fastest overall! That is one free-wheeling tick! Jerry's brother Jim did very well in the aqua bike competition as well (just swim and bike--no run).
AND...in case that just wasn't enough good news...Tina's relay team finished 3rd overall in 4:45, thanks to Tina's super-speedy 1:39 half marathon.
And, now the "from the field reports" that we all love. Here's Frank KJ's report on the race:"Most astounding is that Paul took a spill on the bike course and ran a little extra on the run. Guess the crash got him really fired up. For an extremely hot day he ran fast. I had a great swim but never found the legs on the bike leg; but lucky for me they came back on the run leg and I picked up a lot up heat exhausted casualties to move into 2nd (very happy with that). One of those "casualties" were Jerry who - despite an email last week claiming he would go easy on the bike - really put the hammer down. Jerry caught me at mile 23, Paul at mile 32 of the bike leg. I passed Jerry at mile 8 of the run. It was extremely hot today; I have never seen people cramping after after the bike leg in a New England race but it happened today.
Tina's team did very well winning the mixed relay category. They are now 3 for 3. They started 5 minutes behind and their biker passed me. I spotted Tina at the turnaround. She had about a minute on me and I thought I would catch her but I never got closer than 45 seconds. She was flying - as many people kept mentioning to her. (I would like to point out though that I did run 48 seconds faster thus winning the Tina vs. Frank 13.1 race Jerry mentioned the other day ;-) )
It was good to see the De Zutters and Millers cheering us on: Jennifer, Audrey, Braden and Alex out there too. I'm sure the kids all fell asleep fast with all the energy they burned swimming and playing."
Frank also points out that, as NETT is an officialy registered triathlon team, these performances give us big points in the FIRM Grand Prix!
Jerry is his usual humble self in his report:
"My performance can be explained as, you get out of it what you put into it. I started swim training 3wks ago and have very few runs over 1hr this spring not to mention no hard bricks longer than ~35m bike/5mile run (multi-brick aside). Been spinning and getting on the bike all along. So when my swim came up mediocre, had a good bike split and couldn't finish off with a solid run, I more or less got what I deserved. I wouldn't blame it on the heat or the fact that the 4 gels and powerbar taped to my bike fell off in the first mile
of the ride.
My brother Jim did the aquabike. He had a good swim but not quite the bike he was looking for. Already chomping at the bit for the next race.
But easily the race highlight of the weekend for me was the induction of my (and Paul's) daughter into the ranks of triathletes. Check out the photo album of the kids race the day before our race. Was great to watch and support the kids who really made good efforts on a hot day!!"
Tina's report is short and sweet: "It was brutally hot! Paul ran down everybody and got the first place. Jerry biked super fast and I almost let Frank catch me on the run."
Congrats to all....very very strong representation out there.
Proud to be a Pony!
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