Backstory

The last time I did this race in 2017 I signed off my race report saying I didn’t love the race but could probably be peer pressured into doing it again. Well I’m here to tell you after a second peer-pressured go at this event: Nope. Never again. Not even if my whole team is doing it. No way.

I really hate to be negative but describing it honestly, it’s just not a great race. The people are so nice, I appreciate the Marines being out on the course and welcoming us onto the base, everyone I interacted with was responsive and friendly; but the course is a mess and the logistics make no sense. It’s run by the Marine Corps Marathon organization and I think the issues all derive from the same fact: it’s a triathlon put on by marathon people. Triathlon is a very different animal than a simple run race and it calls for experienced tri-people to make it work. So I’ll amend my previous griping and say that while peer pressure won’t get me to this start line again, I would consider it if it were taken over by seasoned tri professionals. (Hey Rev3! Whaddaya say???)

A group of Speed Sherpa teammates had been talking about doing Quantico again all summer so it had been on my radar but with the season I’ve had (or haven’t had) I wasn’t making any not-last minute decisions about it. One of the teammates pushing it was none other than Chris Owens ( or Owensies as my phone autocorrects to) of Ironman Chattanooga fame. He isn’t doing much triathlon-ing these days. His October wedding is apparently some sort of priority for him. Go figure. This was his was one and only swimbikerun of the year and it’s also Peyton’s perennial birthday race – those were really my only reasons for even considering it.

There were two weeks between USAT Nationals and Quantico, and over that intervening weekend I decided I wanted to hang with Owensies and Peyton so I asked Josh if I could do it. His response was just, ‘why?’ I explained the FOMO and promised to get extra biking done that weekend so he said ok, but I wouldn’t say he was fully onboard with the idea of a random sprint a few weeks before Ironman Atlantic City 70.3.

So I registered on Sunday for a Saturday race. I did so with Peyton’s assurance that she had asked and organizers had told her yes you can do onsite race-day packet pickup. Then on Thursday we received an email that said no you can’t and we all had little panics.

Packet pickup per the email and athlete guide was to be done during working hours on Quantico Marine Corps Base. And here is my first major issue with this race logistically. Getting to Quantico during the week is basically impossible. It is over 30 miles away from DC and probably by design it isn’t near anything. There was absolutely zero chance I could get there from work on a Thursday or Friday by the time they closed shop at 7pm. I’d venture the only people who could make it to packet pickup were people who already lived on base or don’t work which makes me wonder who the target audience of this race is. Is it supposed to just be for military men, women, and spouses? (Then again the Marine Corps Marathon packet pickup was switched a few years ago from DC to the not-convenient-for-anyone National Harbor so maybe this logistical headache is right on brand.)

Fortunately Owensies, Peyton, and I each emailed organizers and each heard back that we could do same day pickup. They were very nice about it but they should just set up a packet pickup somewhere in DC or Arlington and with later hours that people can actually get to. Or do it through Pacers and Potomac River Running like they do for the Marathon. (See the move to National Harbor has been a bane to athletes but a boon to DC run stores that worked out a deal to pick up people’s packets in exchange for buying branded merch.) I was already a little grumpy about the whole race by the time Saturday rolled around. (Being a Saturday race is about the only thing Quantico has in the pro column.)

Race Morning

Scott was kind enough to come with me and oh boy just read on to see how insanely kind he is. Organizers had asked that we get there early to do day-of pickup and Quantico is an hour away without traffic so we got up at 3:45 to be on the road between 4:15 and 4:30. The drive down was easy as it can be and around 5:15 we were pulling onto the base. Fortunately by chance we both had our IDs handy so security check was easy. My very rude giant hound dogs embarrassed me though when one of the Marines waving us through was excited to see them and they woofed at him.

The base is large and there wasn’t great [read: any] signage to get to the transition and parking. We followed Waze and cars with bikes in front of us but didn’t really know if we were on track. After a few minutes we found ourselves in apparently the rightish place and we were waved into a lot by some more marines. They said something about it being the lot for cars with bike racks. It was not the lot right next to transition where we’d parked in 2017 and we weren’t given any other instructions on getting to the race start. I was antsy about doing packet pickup so I quickly grabbed my bike and my bag and headed toward where I could only assume transition was located.

Some fellow athletes kindly pointed the way as I pushed Koop out of the parking lot. It was a five minute walk to transition. Five minutes isn’t long but it was pitch black out and I had to walk my bike on an active road with no shoulder. I thought the whole way of how perfectly terrible it would be to be struck by a driver on my way to the race because of this disorganization. So began the day’s bike-car road-sharing troubles.

Once I found the info tent, which was a bit of a challenge, packet pickup was quick and easy and everyone was very friendly. (The 3:45 wakeup was totally unnecessary but it’s preferable to missing pickup or rushing.) There were some empty portas right next to the tent so I made use of those and then happened upon Peyton shortly thereafter. We headed over to transition where we were racked very close together because darling Peyton, one of the main and only reasons I was doing this race, had signed up the same day as me. Yes that’s right, the Sunday before, because when I texted her and Owensies about the race she remembered she should probably actually register.

We were on a short awkward rack of bikes near the bike out exit which was mostly convenient. I feel for organizers in their unenviable task of finding a way to place transition on base next to the river but this transition area is absurd. It’s totally lopsided, on a hill, racks are not in an even grid, and during the race it gets confusing to navigate.

I also feel for all the newbs who use this as their first triathlon, trying to figure out how to arrange their things under such a confounding array of of zigzagging racks. The person I don’t feel for is whoever is telling these new triathletes to bring buckets for their transition area. It’s gotta stop. Is there a slowtwitch board about this somewhere?? It was a total trend in Quantico, people hauling all their gear into transition in giant 10 gallon buckets which they they place obtrusively next to their towels and apparently sit on when putting on or changing shoes. Can we get the word out to the Beginner Triathlete newsletter or something to put a stop to this?

Sorry, that was a real get-off-my-transition-lawn moment. This race brings out the multisport-curmudgeon in me! Moving on.

Owensies arrived while we were setting up and I couldn’t stay a grouch with him and Peyton for early morning company. We got set up and race-tatted up (and then I remembered I was wearing a kit with sleeves so I had to get permanent markered on my forearms too like a dummy) and we all porta’ed.

We all headed down to the swim start a little before 7am. For some reason Owensies was in the first swim wave at 7:05 and Peyton and I were in the penultimate wave at 7:20 and she was pissed about this. And it was hilarious. She fumed and grumbled that organizers had made some sort of mistake with her entry. We had all had to predict our swim times when registering and Chris and I had both put somewhere in the 13-14 minute range for the 750 meter swim while speedster Peyton had predicted sub-10. I thought she was giving organizers too much credit assuming they had assigned our waves based on these predictions because none of the wave assignments made sense and they’d been nonsensical back in 2017 too.

As Chris headed off to join his early wave Peyton and I decided to make the most of our inexplicable late start to use the portas one more time. This may or may not have been wise because while in there somehow Peyton got what she believed to be (someone else’s) poop on her knee. This of course led to a second (also hilarious) freak out (I’m sorry to mock your pain, P!) on top of the swim wave ire.

We made it back to Scott and the dogs at the swim start around 7:10 where we stripped and handed him our sweatshirts, phones, and shoes. The river (I think this swim is technically in part of the Potomac?) temp was not wetsuit legal but the air temp was only in the 60s so we were chilly after we disrobed.

When it was almost go-time Peyton got a call from her husband, Brian, who was driving to Quantico with two of their sons, and whose car had broken down on base about a mile from the race. With less than five minutes till our wave went off Peyton was having a third (less hilarious [though in the aggregate still funny]) freak out. Scott calmed her, took Brian’s number down, and told us to go get in the water and he would handle it, which he did.

I tell you all of this because a) it’s pretty funny to watch P have meltdown after meltdown before 8 am on her birthday and b) because you should all know what a badass she is for starting the race in that sort of headspace and then killing it. More on how she killed it further down but you have to get through the rest of my griping first.

Swim (Or, more accurately, Walk)

Leaving Brian’s crisis in Scott’s capable (though already-full) hands Peyton and I joined our wave at the swim entrance ramp. In 2017 the water had been shallow enough to stand most of the way around which I imagine is comforting to new triathletes getting used to open water swimming. This year the tide was out though so the water line was even lower turning that comforting swim into basically just a walk.

As we squeezed ourselves to the front of our inexplicably late wave we could see the waves ahead of us on the course and what we saw was a couple hundred athletes trudging upright through the thigh-high water. We were both incredulous remembering how nasty the bottom of the river was and my uncharitable feelings toward the Quantico Triathlon deepened. (Unlike the river. Which remained shallow. And stupid.)

Just before go-time our wave was ushered down the ramp into the river for an in-water start. As the group took our starting positions, in water no higher than even my hips, we just all laughed at the absurdity of what was about to go down. We could see people walking the whole way around the out and back rectangular course so apparently this was gonna be 750 meters of not-really-a-swim.

Peyton has at least a foot on me so I though the situation was probably worse for her. I thought for sure I’d have a tiny person t-rex arm advantage and be able to swim where others would be forced to walk. The bottom was as squishily unpleasant as I’d remembered so I planned to at least try to swim the whole thing.

The gun went off and everyone around me started marching forward. I had taken an unusually aggressive swim position near the front of the crowd and I leapt ahead into the water and started to swim but quickly I was overtaken by people walking and closing in around me. I swam into ass after ass, and had to shorten my stroke to keep from grabbing the muck at the river bottom on every pull. After less than a minute I gave in and stood to join the upright throng.

I tried dolphin jumping a few times but there were too many walkers and every time I was forced back onto my feet. It was tiring trudging through the muddy river floor but it seemed like the only real option and the path of least resistance. I mostly walked to the first buoy 250 meters out. I tried swimming the 50 meters to the next turn and it worked a little as the bottom dropped away a bit.

Three hundred meters in we turned and headed back toward the swim exit and transition. It was a bit deeper for most of this 300 meter stretch and I got a little bit of swimming done. It was actually deep enough in places that I couldn’t really stand, but for most people it was still shallow enough to walk and so that’s what most people were doing. I continued to collide with backs and backsides as I tried to perform the swimming part of swimbikerun.

As we made the final turn back to transition the water got shallower again and it became harder to keep up this swim charade, but I tried the whole way in. At one point after that last turn I experienced a triathlon first when a man swam not over but under me. I don’t quit get the physics of it but this gentleman was apparently riding quite low in the water while he too tried to actually swim the swim, and as he cut across me he swam under my torso and I caught a momentary ride in. (Is that cheating???)

My GPS has the course a little short, just under 700 meters rather than 750. Maybe all the walking made it easier to “swim” the tangents but in my cynicism toward this race I suspect organizer error, or apathy. Either way my swim-walk time per my Garmin was 12:34 and per official race results was 12:46. If I’d actually swum it I’d call this an open water sprint PR but given the circumstances you can’t really call it anything but a mess.

T1

It was a struggle to find my bike among the non-uniform rows of racks but I eventually located Koop. I had to navigate the obstacle course of buckets to get to my shoes and to pull my whip safely down. I think I dawdled a bit in my grumpiness but I would estimate around 3 minutes for T1. I can’t tell you for sure though because our official results don’t include transition times and my Garmin didn’t record correctly. This is another one of those places where it would be helpful to have tri people organize the tri. Transition times may not seem important to people who don’t race triathlon but they’re critical to understanding your race and how you stack up against your competition.

Bike

I felt anxious about this bike course remembering all the vehicle traffic in 2017 and the condition of the roads. I won’t pretend that I looked at the course this year to see if it was the same as two years ago (it was not) but the first few miles were the same so my anxiety went unchecked.

From transition there was about a mile straight shot of rough road that traversed an overpass before hitting the car-plagued main course. I found it hard to pick up much speed due to some degree to the ravaged blacktop but more because my legs were burning up with lactic acid. This race was by no means any sort of goal so I was coming into it unrested – in fact I’d put in 8 hours of hard training in the four days before race day. That explained some of the burn in my legs as I got pedaling, but I think it was also the half mile walk in the mud we’d just done. I had lactic acid sloshing around in a way I’ve never experienced after an actual swim.

I felt totally frustrated with myself as I tried to find anything approaching the 20+ pace I thought I should be holding to no avail. Then, just when I was starting to feel the burning dissipate, I got caught in the exact same traffic snarl that did me in two years ago. Athletes were riding all over the road, many on hybrid and heavy, slow bikes were just cruising down the center of the lane making it impossible for faster cyclists, and more critically, cars, to safely pass. Two miles in I found myself eating tailpipe behind a car that could not get around this oblivious peloton. The bikes riding two and three abreast were traveling maybe 15 miles an hour thus the driver too was slowed to 15 and I, the same. With bikes and cars in both directions the car couldn’t safely get by so for several minutes I choked on exhaust while forced to a crawl. In all fairness to the driver, he or she was doing everything they could to drive safely and respectfully, there was just nowhere for them to go and no way for anyone to accelerate around the melee.

My irritation at this race grew inversely as the pace slowed and the air quality disintegrated. Finally there was a break in race and vehicular traffic and the car got away and I tried to make up some speed just in time to hang a left and head up the toughest climb of the day. We’d already been false-flatting for a while but now the grade increased for a significant mile-long haul. Somewhere in the middle of that uphill slog my watch buzzed a very disappointing first five mile lap of 17.6 mph.

At the top of the hill the course wound oddly through a school parking lot. This is when I realized the course was different than 2017 and that I had no idea what was next. I wished in that moment that I had done just the teensiest bit of race homework in the five days since I’d registered. I also wished course designers hadn’t routed us through this bizarre narrow parking lot. Once again I was stuck behind newer riders in a place where I couldn’t safely pass. Looking back at GPS this asinine diversion that was used to turn us around and send us back down the hill was fully a third of a mile and took almost two arduous minutes – that’s a lot on a sprint course.

Once out of the parking lot and heading back downhill I knew I should get low and fast, but between the cars, the novices, and realizing I didn’t know the course that well I just couldn’t find the courage to drop into aero. I kept my itchy fingers off the brakes but otherwise played it very safe descending. As soon as we swung right back onto the road where I’d hit the earlier traffic jam I knew I HAD to pick up the pace.

My legs were feeling better despite the climbing, so I shifted into my big rings and pushed. With a slight false flat downhill I was able to hold 24 mph for a few minutes which made me feel better and helped me overtake some of the people I’d been stuck behind for miles and miles at this point. There were some twists and turns and rollers for the next couple miles but lap two, miles five through ten, averaged 21.1 mph which felt like a vast improvement.

Heading back toward transition I rode past Scott and the pups at what I thought was an odd viewing location – not somewhere I expected to see them. Turns out while we were swimming and biking Scott had gone out to help Peyton’s husband, Brian, push his totally dead van off the road and into the lot where Scott was now spectating. I called to him and the hounds as I rode by on my way back in.

The last two miles took us to another rolling out and back and then once more onto the overpass and the rough road back to transition. Just like 2017 the bike dismount was a few hundred meters further than I expected and I slowed down way too soon losing probably 15 to 20 seconds of overall time. (I would say I’ll make sure to remember that for next time but I’m never doing this race again.) Between that error and the congested potholed final stretch I was forced back to a 19.5 average for those last 2.8 miles for a total bike time of 39:48 and 19.2 mph, according to GPS anyway. Official time was 12.6 miles, 40:10, and 18.6 mph average which I’m of course less thrilled with.

T2

Again my Garmin didn’t record any sort of bike-to-run time and our results don’t include our transitions so I don’t know. But I felt quick and efficient in T2. Given my beneficial rack placement and that I didn’t need to grab nutrition for a 5k I’m pretty sure I was under a minute. I also forgot to ditch my bike sunnies so as I was heading out the run-out chute I tried to put my run glasses overtop of the pair I was already wearing. I pulled the first pair off my face and tucked them into the back of kit feeling silly, but that was probably another few seconds I didn’t spend in T2.

Run

The first bit of the run is like an obstacle course up a steep winding ramp, similar in grade to a parking garage, across a bridge, and back down an identical steep winding ramp. It’s hard to pick up any sort of speed until this obstacle has been dispatched with and you’re on the actual run trail.

And I do mean “trail.” The pedestrian parking garage is the only bit of this 5k that takes place on pavement. The rest of the course is on a wooded dirt and lightly graveled trail. Under normal circumstances I find trail-running intimidating – I’m always afraid to step on something and roll my ankle. This race was not normal circumstances and as I tried to settle into some sort of speed and rhythm all I could think was, ‘I do not remember how to do this or what this should feel like.’

I discovered that when you haven’t been running you can actually forget how to do it. Over the month of July I had banked a grand total of 37 miles. The first couple weeks of August had been similarly low volume and I’d been forced to start doing a lot of my running on an anti-gravity treadmill. I knew intellectually that I should feel like maxed out hell during the whole 5k – sprint tris should be torture if you’re racing them right. But I couldn’t remember what maxed out hell felt like, where that red line was that I could hold onto for three miles. I was afraid to get too close to the red line I could no longer see or feel knowing that I was out here running with minimal fitness.

I was still trying to figure it out when I finished the first mile in 7:46. I was encouraged by those numbers. 7:40s felt respectable enough in my (unconditioned) condition. I also felt like I was probably playing things too safe and that I needed to pick up the effort for two miles to keep from feeling like I’d held back.

Of course just as I told myself to take it up a notch I was climbing. Most of mile two is a gradual but not unserious climb, made less unserious by the uneven footing. I did indeed increase my effort but I was also forced to slow as I ascended. I lost my grip on those 7:40s and dropped into the mid-8s as I crested the gravel grinder. I was happy to turn around at the run course’s halfway point but I was afraid to pick up too much speed on the trail heading down.

At the halfway point turnaround the triathlon course merged with an 12k run and the path grew a little more congested. I didn’t see a lot of women but a number of guys started passing me from that strange distance race. (Are 12ks a thing?) At first I told myself they were men and in a totally different event so just let them pass and stay steady. I still felt unsure of myself and  didn’t know how much more effort I could sustain for the next mile and change.

After a few minutes of being passed though it was really grating on my ego and I decided to put up more of a fight. These dudes were in no way my competition that day but for whatever reason they became my motivation to dig deeper. As the sixth or seventh guy came up on my left and was about to overtake me I stepped on the gas. I used the last remnants of the descent to drop into the low 7s and stayed put as well as I could when the ground flattened back out. I held that guy at bay as I ticked off mile two at 7:57 – not ideal but ok with the long climb and at least I’d kept it sub-8.

With a mile to go I was finally running what I would consider fast – in the 7:teens – and for the first time that morning I felt like I was remembering how to run. The pace, the turnover, the saying fuck-no to men who wanted to pass me, it all made me feel like my old pre-fracture self again and it made me happy.

There were a few more twists and turns and punchy uphills but for the most part I just had to maintain to the finish line. A half mile from the end I was pulling out 6:30s and wondering if I could hold onto them when my left shoe came untied. We had to whip around a tight turn and I almost stepped clear out of my sneaker. There was no way I was going to stop and take time away to lace the damn thing. I backed off my pace a touch and focused on managing my footfalls so I wouldn’t lose my footwear before the finish.

I managed to avoid a fiasco and pull down a 7:14 for that third mile. I could now see the finisher’s chute. I kept my shoe on as I rounded the final turns and took off fast as I could still muster. That last .1 (.16 if you consult my GPS) clocked a strong 6:27 average and I felt like I’d rediscovered a little piece of my run-self as I crossed the finish line. Final run time was 23:56 and overall was 1:19:49. I also learned later I had the second or third fastest female run of the day, giving me some hope that my run legs are still in there somewhere waiting for my bones to get fully healed.

Aftermath

Owensies and teammate, Fede, were waiting for me at the end of the chute. I got my medal and some food and joined them. Owens was ready for his finisher beer so we grabbed some 9am brewskies and went looking for the rest of the group.

The weird, truncated awards ceremony was starting not too long after I finished and we wandered over thinking our very fast teammate, Marco, could have nabbed an overall spot. Ya see, the only awards that Quantico hands out at the race are the top 3 women and men overall, so unless we thought one of our group was in the running for one of those spots we probably wouldn’t have even stuck around. But we went to listen to the men’s awards.

Marco didn’t win sadly, but then the announcer moved onto the women. He announced the third place winner and her time of 1:18:something and Peyton perked up. “Wait at least according to my Garmin I was a couple minutes faster than that. I think I was 1:16” The announcer moved on to the second place finisher calling her name and her time of 1:17:something and Peyton got even more excited. The voice moved on to proclaim the overall female winner and called Peyton’s name. We ran forward cheering her on. She was a little shocked and we (I) were (was) a little obnoxiously ecstatic as we rushed her to the podium and took her picture.

After the (very brief) awards ceremony we gathered our bikes and the whole team reconvened around Peyton’s Taco Bell-filled car in the parking lot. Initially I resisted her offer of day-old fastfood  but eventually I relented, accepting a car-temperature dorito-loco “taco.”

It actually kinda hit the spot but since I don’t plan on racing Quantico again next year I don’t plan on eating Taco Bell again. Ever. (Unless Peyton finds a different birthday weekend tri and continues supplying the post-race contraband.) I washed that fast food aberration down with a rosé cider (also Peyton-provided) before Scott and I rounded up the hounds for the drive back to DC.

It took most of the day for results to be posted online. Given that Peyton had won the whole dang thing with a 1:16 and I had a 1:19 I thought I’d probably placed pretty well, but I gave up on reloading the results page after a while and took a nap when I got home. I woke up to texts from friends congratulating me on my “podium” so apparently results were finally up.

I was very excited to learn I’d won the 30-39 age group – which you may notice is not a USA Triathlon sanctioned age group – and to have been 6th woman overall. There were 66 women in 30-39 and 197 women total so that wasn’t too shabby! It was far more than I’d expected considering I felt like I had forgotten how to run, had biked poorly, and hadn’t actually swum.

It would have been nice to have a regular awards ceremony at the race to celebrate the victory. Instead I got a nonvitation a couple weeks later to come to a “special” awards ceremony for all age group winners back on Quantico at 3pm on a Thursday. And this invitation came in snarky “PLEASE RSVP THIS IS YOUR SECOND NOTICE”  email form after the first email they sent went into my spam folder. I tried to be nice in my email declining the “invite,” and they sent me my award in the mail, but really who exactly do they think can attend a ceremony 40 miles from DC in the middle of a weekday afternoon.

It would have also been nice (for this blog and for posterity because, you may recall, I’m never doing this race again) to have had pictures. But there were no race photogs out on the course. I find this a bizarre omission from the Marine Corps Marathon organization – they know people love getting race pics – they even memorialized this fact on their very acid trip of a 2018 Marathon race shirt!

Finally and most of all, it would have been nice to get USAT points for my best finish of the year. But this isn’t a USAT sanctioned event so my USAT ranking doesn’t reflect that I won, not just women 35-39 but all women in their 30s. Kinda feels like I did the whole annoying thing for nothing. Well nothing except the company of Owensies and Peyton and a stale taco, and I’d like to think I could come by those things without having to walk through the mud on an active military base next year.