Oh yeah, the real first race, or Turning Off Your Head

Maybe I left the eight of you hanging on what happened at the race that ended up being my first of 2012 after two false starts. Or maybe you were looking for beer recipes and stumbled in here thanks to my four-year-old photo. In any event, I apologize, something I've done quite a bit lately.

I've done the Loveland Lake-to-Lake Triathlon five times now, more than any other race. It's a 1.5K (.93 miles) swim, a 30-mile bike and a 10K run that starts in a lake near Loveland High School. The bike course is the highlight of the day, and normally it takes racers along some foothills between Loveland and Fort Collins, complete with a massive climb and a screaming descent around Horsetooth Reservoir before a long, flat hammer back to Loveland. The run is just a lap around Loveland Lake.

This year, because of the High Park Fire the course was modified and shortened so that it stayed down in the Loveland area, a flatter course with a couple of shorter climbs than the original. The run was changed because of construction around the lake, so no one could really compare past results to their performance on that day.

Which I welcomed, at least in the final analysis. I didn't start my watch because ... I don't know, it just didn't seem like the thing to do. My wave went last so I made a note of the time of day when each wave left, with it in mind to take a guess at the end of the race; we have timing chips, which get a more accurate time than any wristwatch, anyway.

The swim was the same 1500 meters and my time of 23 minutes and something stacked up with my previous performances. The chip time, however, is taken at the entrance to transition, a nice 400-yard run from the water's edge, which adds a couple minutes to everyone's swim time. Before the ride I set the watch's countdown timer to beep every 10 minutes so I knew when to drink electrolytes. Which I did. I passed a lot of people on the bike but dialed it back a little when I made the turn for the lake.

Only when I got my running shoes on did I start my watch — and it ran for about 30 seconds before it completely blanked and emitted this high-pitched beep for the remainder of the race. Even though I couldn't turn off the watch I turned off my head and monitored my pace by feel. I wanted to ditch the watch in the bushes or maybe toss it in the lake but at this point I'm protecting the 20-plus-year strip of white around my wrist from having worn a watch forever. Guess I'm more vain than I thought.

Anyway, at some point on the as-yet-undetermined-distance run, my legs took on some lactic acid, my turnover decreased and I just got my ass across the line. The run turned out to be 5.1 miles, and I averaged 7:46 per. The watch stopped beeping and completely reset after a while.

Nevertheless, I don't know if I'll ever start a watch with the gun again. I needed a race to get my head and my body on the same page and this might have been it. So we'll see what the blank-faced watch has in store going forward.