Matt Nussbaum – Age Grouper

Patriot is one of my favorite races and has been a great season opener the past few years. I try my best to approach it with curiosity trying to see where my fitness stands and what small things I need to work on for the next race. This year, that curiosity was as important as ever. This was my first year racing in the open/elite category and I was coming off a mysterious rib injury that popped up toward the end of May and forced me to take a week totally off and an easy week leading right up to race day. Thankfully I was able to recover just in time for the race, but it was a stressor I could have done without. On the bright side, the time off got the fire burning hot and I was ready to give this race everything I could muster.

Cathedral Camp is just close enough that I can drive down in the early morning, so it was a very early wake up (~3:45). I put away the breakfast that my coach recommended and packed the last few things into the car for a 4:45 departure. The ride only took about an hour, but we came at the side from the opposite direction than I have in the past which led to us waiting in a line of cars for a while. I was getting a little antsy seeing the clock ticking away and eating into the time I wanted to spend getting transition set up and getting in a quick warm up.

We finally got in there and I hustled through chip pickup and body marking to get to work setting up transition. I very quickly made peace with the fact that I wasn’t going to get in the warm up. I’ve never warmed up for this distance before, so I wasn’t that broken up about it. Setting up transition only took a few minutes and getting PR lotion, sunscreen, body glide, etc. on only took a few more. I did a couple of shadow transitions and headed off toward the swim start.

I think the last time I was in a mass start was the first triathlon I ever did which made me a little nervous. The group was only about fifteen athletes, so I lined myself up toward the front. My swim is generally really strong compared to the field most, so I figured I would probably get off the front with one or two others before that group broke up. The horn went off and my guess turned out right. I went very hard off the line with everyone else and the group broke up before I knew it. I hung on to the leader’s feet for a couple hundred yards before deciding the pace was more than I was going to be able to hold. I was by myself after that (per usual). I think this was the calmest swim that I can remember. The wind was coming from the west and any chop was blocked by a peninsula until the turn buoys. Swimming into the chop was a drag, but it wasn’t terribly long. It was a clean shot to the end after that second buoy. I could feel myself getting tired on that return leg. I refused to give myself any excuses and hung in until the end. I held on to second out of the water and ran past the wetsuit strippers into transition.

I transitioned a little slower than I would have liked, but really wanted to make sure not to forget anything. When I got to the mount line, the volunteer told me that the leader had a mechanical at the line and that I was first on the course. It was pretty cool chasing the cop car as the leader and worked as a heck of a motivator.

My power plan might have been a bit ambitious. I made it happen though. I absolutely hammered the power and crushed that course. It was awesome having the volunteers cheering me on at a couple of points including a big group of them at the start of the second loop that went wild when I went by. The second loop got kind of sketchy. I had to keep pushing even watts while passing what felt like hundreds of people. Many stayed to the right of the road like they were supposed to, but there were plenty that didn’t. I yelled that I was coming by as much as I could. There were still plenty of clenching moments as I was flying by 10+ mph faster than they were riding. When I finally got off the second loop and had clear road, I reduced the power a little bit to try and set myself up well for the run.

I cruised into T2 as the race leader and had another lackluster transition. Again, I wanted to make sure to get everything set up right and ready for what I knew would be the toughest leg. I ran out of transition with no one in sight still and got to have one of my Boston Tri Team teammates as the volunteer leading me on the bike.

I got a little overexcited and wound up running harder than planned for the first mile or so. I caught myself before I could do too much damage and settled into the pace I was supposed to. The plan was to pick up the pace around mile four, but my legs gave me nothing more when I tried to pick it up. The guy behind me caught me around mile six and we exchanged a quick fist bump as he cruised by. I figured it was still plenty early in the run and let him go without a fight. He stayed in sight for about a mile, but that was it. I was running scared at that point. I had no way of knowing if someone was catching up to me and wasn’t going to let myself look back. I just kept clicking off the miles until about mile 11 when it was time to hit it with everything I had left for those last 2 miles. I hit the last hill that one of my friends lovingly refers to as “the fuck you hill” and put myself well into the red pushing up and over it. It was just about a mile after that and I emptied the tank running down the road, into the camp, and around the last two corners to the finishing straight. I could barely stand when I finally got over the line but was absolutely ecstatic to be the second in.

I’m so proud of this effort and so excited to see where the season goes from here. This race is where I did my first half and it means so much to have such a strong result just a few years later. It turned out that a guy racing age group beat my time by two seconds which put me in third overall, but I’ve pretty much come around to accepting it. I still got the check since he wasn’t racing in the category for it.

Swim Split: 0:24:58 (2nd Overall)

Bike Split: 2:06:34 (2nd Overall)

Run Split: 1:30:16 (23rd Overall)

Overall Time: 4:06:42 (3rd Overall)