Cool and dry

Looks like the weather is going to cooperate this year, so time to set up some meeting times and places.

Run: I'll be at the north end of the baggage drop-off until 11:50 pm.
Bike: I'll be at the band shell in Central Park until 10:15 a.m.
Swim: I'll be at the bottom of the ramp of the pavilion (the southeast corner) on the beach side until 12:45.

If you're thinking of coming along, let me know in advance so I can keep an eye out for you.

Start the year with a triathlon. You know you want to.

I'm cribbing from last year's post. And why not? The details are all pretty much the same. But this year will be even better! Not quite sure why, but I can't see why not. Unless the weather fails us. We'll see closer to the time.

If Christmas is eight days away, then New Years must be only fifteen days from now, if I'm doing my math right. That means that you can make plans to join me for some - or all - of this year's NYC New Years Triathlon. And how do you do that?

Run
Join me at the New York Road Runners Club Emerald Nuts Midnight Run. If you've never been in Central Park at midnight, this is your chance. Will it be cold? Probably, but so is Times Square, but you'll encounter fewer tourists and have a better view of the fireworks.

Bike
The following morning, join me in Central Park for a leisurely bike ride to Coney Island. The route is mostly in parks and along greenways, and there's not a whole lot of traffic on the morning of New Year's Day. Let's try to meet at the band shell (we can call it the T1 Transition Area, if that makes you more comfortable as a triathlete. Or should it be T2?). Say, 10:00 a.m.? That way we can take our time getting to the ocean.

Swim

Jump in the Atlantic with the Coney Island Polar Bears. This is one of those things that plenty of New Yorkers have heard about but never done. Quit putting it off - this is one of the happiest places to be on January 1. The crowd is rowdy - clearly some folks never stopped drinking after the night before - but friendly. Run in to the water, run back out, and in addition to getting your heart rate up, you'll have something to impress your friends with when you get back home.

And for triathlon purists, I know that the order is backwards. But so what? It's not like it's a USAT sanctioned event, and no one is keeping score.

If you're thinking of joining me, drop me a line so I'll know to look out for you.

2011-2012 Recap

This will be the year that will be remembered as the time the triathlon went national. Sort of.

To start at the beginning, in early December (2011, I'm catching up here) the New York Road Runners Club sent out an e-mail to everyone signed up for the Midnight Run in Central Park, asking if they had any good stories. I wrote back with a summary of triathlon. A few days later, I got an e-mail from their PR department asking if they could have a producer from CNN contact me. Sure, why not? The producer called me, and after making sure that I was not a crazy person - or, given what I was planning on doing, at least not too crazy to appear on television - and asked if I'd like to be interviewed on camera shortly before the new year at the start of the race.

We arranged to meet near the bandshell about forty minutes before the race started, no easy feat, as there are approximately six thousand lively costumed people milling around, with loud music and flashing lights. Eventually we found each other, and the producer introduced me to the correspondent who was going to conduct the interview. We had a quick chat and then waited for the producers of CNN's New Years Eve show in Times Square to let us know when we would be going live. For the past several years, the show has been hosted by the unlikely pair of Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffiths. We waited. And we waited some more. The producer had a phone to his ear and was nodding. "OK, we can wait. (pause) She did what? (pause). And is she going to get dressed? (pause, then, to us) "Apparently Kathy Griffiths took off all her clothes, so we might have to wait a little longer."

The clock was ticking, and I knew we had to get the interview done in time for everyone to cut back to Times Square. Eventually we got the all clear, but we were told that we would have closer to thirty seconds rather than the three minutes we had prepared. Here's what it looked like: (thanks, illegal YouTube uploader!)

So, I managed to get the story across pretty quickly, and while it wasn't pretty, I was impressed with how the reporter managed to squeeze the tale into a much quicker package.

Since I hadn't been sure that I would make it on TV, I didn't tell too many people to watch for me. A few did (thanks, Mom!), and a hand full of others caught me by accident. After all, who watches CNN for the ball drop? One of my colleagues at work, an older gentleman, later told me that he was in New Orleans at the time, one time zone behind, and had the TV on in his hotel room as he and his girlfriend  prepared for the evening. He was floored to see someone he knew on TV. So floored that the next time he saw me he called his girlfriend and put me on the phone to prove that, indeed, I had been the one that he had seen. So floored that every single time I see him - about twice a month - he brings up my TV stardom. Even almost a year later. It's getting a little awkward.

And what of the race? As usual, it started with fireworks:

 The run wasn't too cold, and it once again featured the "champagne" stop instead of a water stop at mile 2 (sham-pagne? sparkling cider, to be clear).

The bike ride the following morning was a solitary affair, which is to say that despite my national TV coverage, no one chose to join me the next day. It took about two hours to get there, as you can see by my bike computer.

The swim was, as usual, happy chaos. My friend Capri, one of the leaders of the Coney Island Polar Bears, took this video. Over the summer, I showed the video to a friend, hoping to convince her of the virtues of taking part next year, and her comment was that it sounded a bit like a horror film with crowds fleeing a monster. She's not 100% wrong. But, really, we were enjoying ourselves, I swear. Look at all the smiling people:

Including one happy triathlete: