Race Day
It took a lifetime to get here. Ahead are 140 miles of mountain lakes and roads. At midnight, it's over.
By Barbara Stephens
Photos by Scott Kingsley
Emily McHugh '94 tucks a strand of hair underneath her swim cap and weaves her way through the crowd toward Mirror Lake. It's the mass start of the 2003 Ironman USA Lake Placid Triathlon, and as the clouds darken, she enters the water in her sleeveless wetsuit. The water is surprisingly comfortable, and she concentrates on getting to the front of the start-behind the elites-near the fast women swimmers. "Excuse me, fast swimmer, fast swimmer," she announces as she maneuvers through a small opening in the mass of people. The lake is thick with swimmers treading water and jockeying for position. The pressure of bodies so close together creates a fear that Emily wants to immediately subdue. She touches her goggles for reassurance and looks at her watch.
Over the next 14 hours, Emily will push her mind and body to their limits in one of the sporting world's greatest endurance tests-the Ironman Triathlon. She and about 1,800 other hopefuls will attempt to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, and run 26.2 miles-a full marathon.
Not everyone will finish. But Emily is confident that her months of training and preparation will lead to the finish line, many miles away.
Time: 00:00:00
The 7 a.m. blast of the starting cannon reverberates through the mountains, but Emily doesn't hear the echo, only feels the surge of the swimmers. Panic. She keeps her head out of the water and starts her freestyle. Just wait. Slowly, a space opens up, and she steers through the mass of swimmers. As she predicted, she can't really maintain a fast pace, but she remembers her goal. She isn't going to hammer through the swim; the more she relaxes, the faster she goes. She navigates through the legs and arms splashing in her face, rides the current, and sights the buoy for the turn. So much for the form she perfected at Wheaton under swim coach Bella Marlow. After the turn, Emily swims more freely toward the shore. Then it's out of the water, a quick jog on the beach, and back into the lake for the second lap. This time she can lean toward the left, find the underwater cable, and stay on it. Stroke smoothly, breathe, relax, swim straight, exit through the swim finish line. Only 198 competitors--male and female--emerge from Mirror Lake before Emily does.
Time: 00:58:50
The swim behind her, Emily jogs the quarter mile to the transition area, where a volunteer takes her wetsuit, hat and goggles from her. She changes into her biking gear and downs a packet of Gu, an electrolyte gel that provides quick fuel. If she uses her imagination, the apple cinnamon flavor tastes like a Hostess apple pie. But its thick sliminess tends to stick in her throat, and she swallows a mouthful of water to wash it down. A volunteer pushes Emily's bike toward her, hands her the helmet, and asks if she's doing fine. Yes. Emily checks the three pockets on her bike jersey for her food, tapes the halves of Power Bars on the bike frame, secures her helmet, and pushes off.
There's a big downhill coming out of town, and Emily takes her time; the rain that eventually will deter several of today's hopefuls has started to fall. She takes a deep breath and cruises out of the Athlete's Village into the quiet of upstate New York. When she gets to the bottom of the hill, she sees her fellow Team EnVision members biking in the opposite direction, cheering for her. "I can do it," she thinks. She has trained hard, sacrificing weekends from December to March to learn how to maintain the highest rpms on the bike. Every Saturday during the winter, she practiced with her coach, Fred Bartlett, and other Team EnVision members, sweating through the pyramids: One minute in one gear, then a shift down for two minutes, a shift down for three minutes, continuing down through the gears and then back up. As the first hill comes into sight, Emily tests her pyramid training and passes in a blur of pumping legs and silver-blue mountains.
A long downhill into Keene allows time to eat a Power Bar, and Emily relaxes on the aero bars of "Smurfette," her blue Cannondale bicycle. The Cannondale was a big purchase; it represented not only a significant financial investment, but also a mental and physical commitment to this race. Emily started training on a 30- pound "dinosaur" of a bike. When she upgraded to the 18-pound bike she's riding today, the question Emily asked herself was, "How far can I go?" Right now, she's thinking, "Can I go?" The thing you don't see on ESPN coverage of Ironman triathlons is the peeing. To ensure fast times, the top racers strictly regulate input and output; they eat foods that allow minimum evacuation during the event. However, because racers must intake great quantities of fluids, peeing is unavoidable. The best of these athletes use the long downhill cycling stretches to urinate right where they sit. During her training, Emily tried again and again to pee on the bike. No luck. Today she shifts in her seat and makes an attempt. Nothing. This may be a battle for another day.
In Upper Jay, she takes the left that her friend, Will Whiting, refers to as "Highway to Heaven"--a long uphill toward Wilmington. The reward is a picturesque view of Whiteface Mountain. Her plan to eat every half-hour has worked well so far. The joke among her team members is that the triathlon is really a "quadrathon"--the fourth event of the day is eating. Pringles, peanut butter and jelly, Gatorade, Gu, PowerBars, Oreos, and Fritos are among the menu items today. When she gets past Wilmington, she's going to reward herself with a Snickers bar. "Eat often on the bike course and include special goodies," her trainer said. Now she takes in a banana to maintain potassium and, well, induce constipation. The road here narrows through a notch, and the constant headwind of 18-20 mph, accompanied by gusts up to 30 mph and light rain, make the tight, curvy turns frightening. Five final climbs lead back into Lake Placid-Little Cherry, Big Cherry, Mama Bear, Baby Bear and Papa Bear-and Emily is again thankful for her winter bike training. After the quiet ride in the mountains, her adrenaline rushes from the cheers of the crowd in town and people with megaphones coaching her up Papa Bear. It would be another three hours on the second loop of the bike course before she would hear those cheers again.
The brief stop in town allows Emily to grab her "special needs" bag, which holds, mainly, more food. There are 56 more miles-an identical loop-left on the bike, but this time she knows what to expect. She remembers Will's assessment of her abilities: "The longer the race, the better you do." She is willing to go faster, perhaps 30-40 mph on the downhill, but still maintain her pace of 6-8 mph on the uphill climbs. Her strength is her determination. She isn't racing with anyone but herself.
The light rain stops when she starts the second loop, and long before she arrives at North Country School and Camp Treetops, Emily hears screaming. She once worked at the school, and this past week she spoke with campers about the triathlon. The kids go wild when they see Emily approaching. Handmade signs are everywhere-GO EMILY! Their encouragement is a boost as the weather turns more and more threatening.
The turnaround in Black Brook brings with it a welcome break: an outhouse. The stop represents a loss of 3-4 minutes, but Emily's not counting. Instead, she and her fellow cyclists are thinking about the skies. At the notch, a cloudburst drops four inches of water on the course. Emily slows down, and signals to the other riders that she isn't taking the corner at full speed. "So, I'm kind of confused," she shouts to a fellow athlete. "Is this the swim or the bike?" Her sense of humor over the past seven-plus hours is rewarded with the sound of cheers in town again. Soon she'll enter the final transition.
Time: 08:27:49
As soon as Emily is off the bike, a volunteer wisks it away and directs her to the changing tent, which is now flooded and muddy. Great. Water is a double-edged sword in running; it's essential for hydration, but it's murder in your shoes. If she runs with wet feet, Emily knows she'll have blisters within minutes. A volunteer finds some paper towels, and when her feet are as dry as she can manage, Emily pulls out a jar of Vaseline. By lathering her feet with Vaseline, she creates a waterproof barrier. When she finds that her running shorts are soaking wet, she opts to stay in her biking shorts. Then Emily digs inside her bag for her run shirt. Sewn on the back is a photo of Emily's cousin, Karen Howland. Karen was 57 years old when she died, a cancerous lump in her breast spreading disease throughout her body. Emily was there for the last days of Karen's life, and knows there's no way her own discomfort today will compare to Karen's seven years of pain. She says to herself, "I'm going to finish this thing." She wraps the fuel belt around her waist, downs some Gu and Gatorade, and leaves the transition area. Time for a marathon.
Leaving Lake Placid for the third time, Emily runs past her mother in the crowd. Judy McHugh is an RN at Rhode Island Hospital's trauma unit, and she is a bit worried about Emily's condition during the race. As she passes, Emily turns around to see her mother crying. She knows her mother saw the picture.
"Listen to your body," Fred says. But what Emily is thinking right now is how loudly the crowd is cheering. They know she's on her last leg of the race; they, too, know how far she's come. But really, it's much longer than 140.6 miles. In gym class, Emily was always picked last; she couldn't catch or throw a ball. She didn't consider herself an athlete at all. She wasn't fat, but she wasn't thin, either. One doctor said, "Well, she'll never have an hour-glass figure." And here she is running along Cascade Road for 26.2 miles, the final leg of an Ironman.
The first part of the run is downhill, and although it is painful, it helps Emily to warm up and find the pace and rhythm of her stride. There is an aid station every mile, and her plan is to run between the stations. When she sees the aid station coming up, she slows to a walk, takes some Gu, water and food, and runs again. She must eat more than the winner because she's out on the course longer. Station by station, she's closer to the finish.
When she turns onto Lake Placid Club Drive, the wind off Mirror Lake reminds her of morning walks around town with Zoey, her dog. She is shocked that she isn't feeling horrible at all. Maybe she is lucky, or eating and drinking properly, or in some Ironman zone. Or maybe the rain just agrees with her. She is calm and the day has become surreal. She doesn't care if she arrives at the finish line at 11:59 p.m. (the race "officially" ends at midnight); her toe is going over.
Emily remembers the way her hands shook when she signed up for the Ironman nearly a year ago. When she first started jogging, she ran for two minutes, then walked for two minutes. Now, she's at the big sign in town that points runners in two different directions: second loop or finish. She turns for the second loop. Thirteen more miles. This is the payoff for all those weeknights of arriving home at 9 p.m. after a bike ride and run, knowing she still had to eat dinner and prepare to teach art to the Helen Keller Elementary and Davis Thayer Elementary students the next day. She's been training for nine months-the length of a pregnancy. Some of her friends became pregnant in December, and they're having their babies in August. She feels as if she's giving birth to this race. Just get from one-mile marker to the next. Eat a Swedish fish. Keep walking up the hills. Everyone does it. Think of Karen. Thirteen more miles.
The din of distant cheering cuts through the wind and rain; another athlete has finished. A great motivator. She shakes out her arms and looks up at the sky over at the Adirondacks. Keep running. This pain is nothing compared to Karen's. She commands her brain to pick up her feet. They listen.
"Two more miles, you're almost done!" She has heard these words in her dreams about the race, but now they echo in her ears as she manages a light jog down Lake Placid Club Drive. She arrives at the sign again, but this time "finish" is the route she chooses. "I really did this!" Emily thinks as she runs down the last hill and enters the chute into the Olympic Speedskating Oval where Eric Heiden won five Olympic gold medals in 1980. The lights beam down, and even though she hears the people screaming, she can't really see them. Then she realizes that there are no other athletes around her.
"Emily McHugh, from Attleboro, Massachusetts--you're an Ironman!"
The crowd erupts; they're cheering just for her. She surges forward, raising her arms in triumph, through the finish gate. A volunteer places a medal around her neck. Megan Gurley, one of her teammates, rushes forward to embrace her, and the fatigue, pain and release of the last nine months turn into tears of success.
Time: 13:44:35
Barbara Stephens is a visiting instructor of English at Wheaton and a writer based on Cape Cod, Mass.
