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Tag: Emma Sklarin

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It was 8:55am in Omaha, and we were sitting hip-to-hip with our competitors, our legs dangling over the edge of the dock. After months of anticipation and training, Katie, Sonia and I finally had our toes in the race. We were smiling and laughing with the girls around us, though they would soon become our fiercest competitors when our wave took off minutes later. That’s just the magic of this crazy sport: when you’ve traveled halfway across the country to push your body through a two-and-a-half-hour, three-sport sprint, you just can’t take it too seriously.

After five long minutes, the buzzer went off and the swim began. The water temperature was 80 degrees on race morning, so it was declared a no-wetsuit race. This meant slightly slower swim times without the flotation power of a wetsuit, but it also meant we would shave time from our transitions since we wouldn’t need to rip off our wetsuits or change clothes at all. Besides the lack of lane lines, the lake swim almost felt like a pool.

While the swim looks peaceful to fans on the docks, in the water it’s a battlefield. Remember that pool game “sharks and minnows,” where the shark grabs as many legs as she can while the other kids scramble to cross the pool? The swim leg of a triathlon is just like that game, except everyone is a shark and it lasts for a mile. I fought my way to the first buoy, and Sonia got stuck between two swimmers, claiming that at one point she “rode on their backs” as she found herself in their line of motion. We circled the buoys to complete the mile, Sonia and I coming in at 27 minutes with Katie close behind.

Sonia and I ran to transition together and cheered each other on. Soon, we were running with our bikes to the bike mount line. Sonia started just ahead of me and Katie, quick as a whip, passed me within the first couple miles. The bike is my worst leg of the triathlon by far, so my goal was just to hang on to a 20mph pace and try to hold my position for as long as possible. I was only successful until the turnaround – when my lack of speedwork caught up to me –, but I still finished the bike leg in my goal of an hour twenty. Katie and Sonia finished the bike leg in 1:10 and 1:14, and I cheered them on the start of the run as I sprinted to transition.

By the time I got to T2, it was almost 11 and already 80 degrees. It was hot, and you could see it on the red faces of all of the runners. I followed Sonia’s advice and dumped a cup of water on my head at each aid station. At one, the volunteer handed me the paper cup and called out “wait, that’s a block of ice!” as I ran away, but I’d already poured it, the ice melting on my head. It felt great.

My run was a blurry mix of bliss and pain, and I couldn’t help but smile. There we were in the middle of Nebraska, running down country roads with some of the best amateur triathletes in the nation – and they were all just as excited to be there as we were. I crossed the finish line six minutes ahead of my goal time with Katie, Sonia, Jeff and my dad all waiting at the end. Katie had finished in 2:26:53, coming in an incredible 7th in our age group. Sonia finished in 2:32, coming in 16th. I came in at 2:39, finishing 25th.

That night at the awards ceremony, Katie took to the podium, standing with the top finishers in our age group. She also found out that all three of us had qualified for Worlds in 2018 in Australia. The next morning, Coach Jeff had an amazing race in the Sprint, coming in hot at 1:13:51 and finishing 7th in his age group. Talk about a coach that can do both! Jeff guided us through our race-day prep and cheered us on throughout the race, only to wake up and absolutely crush his own race the next day.

Two years ago, I raced Nationals in my Dartmouth kit, but I competed mostly for myself. I could’ve never imagined how far our team has come since then. At the finish line, we met an alum, Gabriel, who was racing, too. Maybe that’s why I never stopped hearing “Go Big Green” throughout the race, both from strangers and friends. It propelled us forward, pushed us to dig even deeper and put smiles on our faces in the toughest (and hottest) moments. I think it’s safe to say that Dartmouth made a splash at Nationals this year.

Now for a few huge thank yous: First, dad – you’re the best cheerleader in the game (thank you for flying to (the most exotic) midwestern cities with me)! Jeff – you are a saint for driving to Omaha by yourself with our bikes so that we could have the perfect race set up. I’m not sure how we will ever repay you! Jim – this summer, when the devil on my shoulder told me to stay out on a Friday night and skip a Saturday double-day, I’d remember the joy of the TrainingPeaks box turning green and knowing you’d see me kicking butt in my workout and the devil would pipe down. Thank you for thoughtfully writing training plans that made all three of us fit and confident for raceday!

SBR,

Emma

About the Author

Emma Sklarin is an '18 on the tri team studying Creative Writing, Environmental Studies and Spanish. She loves exploring, boogie boarding and a great post-race beer.

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Throughout the slow Hanover winter, on long trainer rides in our living rooms and bone-numbing snow day runs, all I could think – all we could think – was Florida. Outdoor pools, tri-kit tanlines, sunburned feet…Not only were we getting to start off the racing season in March – two months earlier than it usually begins in New England – but we’d also heard rumors of extensively-decorated Disney-themed rooms in our rental house outside of Orlando. And our dream of Florida was truly all it promised to be. Here are a few highlights, from training to our dreamlike week down South:

Saturdays.

Whether you think Saturdays are for the boys, for the girls, or for no one at all, for Tri Team, Saturdays were just for us. Saturdays meant BRick workouts: 2-3 hours biking on the trainer followed by a 3-5 mile run. Saturdays also held strength workouts, which meant, in the end, that most of our day was spent working out. And you know what? I loved it. I came to treasure Saturdays. Have you ever blocked out a whole day, every week, just for one thing, one goal and purpose? Saturdays were a meditation, a huge chunk of time to think, while my muscles fired and contracted and ached. They were a journey, each and every one of them, up until Saturday March 17th – raceday.

The trailer.

Hours of work over winter break and a spark of the captains’ design genius came to fruition in the form of a beautiful, shiny trailer complete with 25 bike hooks, lovingly named Steve. After digging Steve out of the snow on the Monday evening of finals period, Brandt’s engineering degree was put to the test. We all loaded our bikes, and Brandt, Valentina, Matt and Anna set off on their pilgrimage to Florida. They arrived two days later at our rental mansion, Mickey’s House of Champions, exhausted but propelled by Brandt’s guzzling of Mountain Dew and the great promise of sunshine.

The early mornings.

On the first morning of training trip, my eyes flew open at 6am to music blasting in the kitchen. Had I fallen asleep at the Championsgate retirement community nightclub? No, it was just Katie and Matt eating oatmeal before our morning swim. The rest of us dragged ourselves out of bed, and an hour later we were watching the sunrise over the pool at the National Training Center. Our sun-starved bodies soaked up the early rays between long-course laps in the water. We started all of our days swimming at the NATC, followed by biking, running, yoga classes, foam-rolling, pool-lounging, elaborate home-cooked dinners for 28 and 9pm bedtimes. It was the triathlete’s dream schedule – train, eat, sleep, tell stories and watch Miracle to pass the time – and we could not have been more content.

The raceday ridiculousness.

I remember raceday as a series of strange and comical events:

  1. Eating breakfast at 4:30am and watching Moises consume 2 slices of Domino’s pizza before his sprint triathlon, in the dark
  2. Putting on face tattoos and slathering our skin in body-glide and sunscreen at 6am, still very much in the dark
  3. Squinting from the beach with Sonia before the race, trying to make out the farthest orange buoy in the swim loop, which evaded us in the distance
  4. Casually chatting with Steve and Jim about the (way-too-hot) weather as they passed me on the bike course
  5. Bonking at mile 40 when I ran out of water and clumsily dropped both of the water bottles that volunteers at the final aid stations handed me in motion, one after the other
  6. Getting off of my bike feeling like I’d come home from a long, sweaty journey, only to remember I still had to run a half marathon
  7. Nearly bursting into tears of gratitude when I saw our teammates who were doing the Olympic race the next day cheering us on at transition
  8. Running out of ways to say “GO!!!” to Katie, Sonia and Evan when I saw them each four times on the run, only at mile 6 realizing it was a double-loop course
  9. Lying on the ground minutes after finishing the race and promising myself I’d never do a half ironman again
  10. Watching my teammates, Jeff, Jim and Steve take the podium an hour later and smiling realizing that they’d definitely convince me to sign up for another half ironman this year

The people, the people, the people.

Our people: the crazy-driven, (sort-of-just-crazy,) early-rising, car-singing, banana-eating, foam-rolling, fun-loving, wildly sunburnt athletes that make up our strange, determined family. Our coaches: the endlessly-inspiring, ever-committed, TrainingPeaks-revering, warm and loving people we get to look up to every single day. Tri people: the awe-provoking, dazzlingly-muscular, unevenly-tanned, wholeheartedly-vibrant people that make up a bigger and more welcoming community than we ever knew we were becoming a part of – we’re just happy to be in the middle of it all.

SBR,

Emma

About the Author

Emma Sklarin is an '18 on the tri team studying Creative Writing, Environmental Studies and Spanish. She loves exploring and boogie boarding, and farmer's markets.