Last Saturday, as part of Scarborough’s 350th celebration, hundreds of athletes flocked to town to participate in the first Scarborough triathlon. This group of athletes included a relay team from Current Publishing made up of Executive Editor Brendan Moran, Web Editor Kate Power and Ben Bragdon, assistant editor of the Lakes Region Weekly, one of the Current’s sister newspapers.

With its course of a 1/3-mile swim, a 15-mile bike ride and a three-mile run, many athletes finished the race in just over an hour.

The team from Current Publishing? Not so much.

It was an adventure from start to finish, and here, in their own words, is their story.

Kate’s story:

Kate’s Triathlon Tip: Practice probably makes perfect

As I stood on Scarborough beach staring at the four-foot ocean swells in which I was about to dive, I could isolate only one thought:

Boy, I hope I remember how to swim.

It had seemed like such a good plan in May – get three Current Publishing employees together and compete as a relay team in the Scarborough 350th triathlon. I was all fired up on the notion and managed to finagle Brendan into running and Ben into biking, while I would tackle the 1/3-mile swim.

I think this is an appropriate place to insert, “Oh, the best laid plans…”

Although I did have good intentions of beginning a legitimate swimming routine, I only swam laps in a pool – once – and I didn’t even buy an appropriate bathing suit. It’s funny how time slips away until you realize it’s the night before your first ocean race and instead of getting sleep you’re bustling around Target looking for goggles.

So there I was, standing in my rented wetsuit at 8 a.m., trying to stare down the waves that looked big enough to swallow a lobster boat. The 300 triathletes were broken up into seven groups to be released into the water three minutes apart, depending on age and gender. My group, the relay/novice group, was last. So I had plenty of time to work up some good old-fashioned panic as I watched the “elite men” group swim 20 feet then get pushed back onto the sand by another swell of water.

“YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE,” shouted the race director, a.k.a. my new enemy, as my group approached the oceans edge. Current emotional state: anxious.

“THIRTY SECONDS,” he yelled through the bullhorn. Current emotional state: really frightened.

“RACERS, GO!” Current emotional state:..Did…did I just black out?

No matter what I was feeling before the race began, I knew I had to get my body into that water. My boss was watching. And for some reason, I have a reputation at work for being adventurous. Couldn’t let the inner voice telling me to “run for your life” ruin my rep.

So I swam. I dove head first into the oncoming surf, paddled my arms and kicked my legs because, let’s face it, my life depended on it. Luckily the current was in our favor, so I felt more productive than I was as I made my way past the first, then second, marker buoy. Before the race began, I had been concerned about water temperature, but it wasn’t that cold – battling the waves was much more challenging. I couldn’t get the essential crawl rhythm down due to the swells, so I had to keep my head completely above water in order to breathe. Pair that with the fact that I switched strokes every two minutes to keep from cramping – crawl to breaststroke, breaststroke to weird sideways doggie paddle – the men in the safety kayaks were probably wondering who let this escapee from a third-grade swim class enter a triathlon.

Ultimately, I finished the swim. Never mind that by the end of the race, my swim stroke looked so bedraggled that a lifeguard hopped in the water, thinking I was waving for help. Forget that I had finished near the end of the pack. I, Kate Power, had completed a third of a triathlon. I could now say I was an athlete, I had earned bragging rights and (best of all) I got to hand off the next leg of the race to Ben Bragdon.

Ben’s story:

Ben’s Triathlon Tip: Learn the bike course.

About 20 minutes into the 15-mile biking portion of Sunday’s Scarborough Triathlon, I approached the finish line and an utterly confused Brendan, who didn’t expect me for another half-hour.

For a fleeting moment, I thought that maybe, just maybe, I had lost track of time. Or there was the remote possibility that, despite the fact that I was a first-time racer, I was just a natural cyclist who cruised through the race like Floyd Landis after a doping binge.

But my mind quickly snapped back to reality, and my stomach dropped as I realized I had missed a crucial turn and would now have to double back.

“You’ve only added a mile or so,” said a somewhat amused race worker, unaware that I was already sure I could not finish the regular course, much less an extra mile or so. (Turns out, it was heavy on the ‘or so.’)

That grim turn of events might have sunk a lesser man, a weaker man, a man lacking Olympic-sized will and determination. Of course, that man may have had the sense to take the right turns, or to just stay home.

Mad at myself and the world, as well as Kate, who talked me into this mess, I turned and headed back toward the first turn, cursing as I pedaled. I would soon add the rest of the racers to the list of people on my bad side, as the spandex crowd zoomed easily past my clunky mountain bike.

But a few miles later, back on course, my mood lifted and I settled into a steady pace. My lack of knowledge regarding the course began to play in my favor, as I convinced myself time and time again that the finish was right around the corner.

This little mind game worked well until one hilly portion late in the race, when I was sure that the finish line WAS actually around the corner. My legs, shaking and burning, put their last bit of power into this short upslope, confident they would soon be done for the day. They dreamed of an afternoon on the couch, which has never been as comfortable as it was for those few moments in my mind.

I’m not sure how far I actually was from the finish line when I reached the top of the hill, but if I wasn’t at the end, and I wasn’t, it might as well have been in Paris. The cheery volunteer tried her best to push me along, hollering out, “You’re doing great!”

“By what measure?” my brain screamed, though my lungs were too busy to push the words out. I was spent, done, finished. I would have stopped and walked if I wasn’t sure the bike was the only thing between me and total collapse.

But embarrassment is a hell of a motivator, and the dreaded sweep motorcycles were not far behind me. I am a healthy, relatively fit 31-year-old, I thought, and I am not finishing this race on the back of a motorcycle. So I soldiered on.

A short downhill section recharged my spirits, if not my legs, and I was sure I could now make the finish and hand the race off to Brendan, if he had not yet fallen asleep or gone home.

I was cruising along just fine, with a growing sense of accomplishment, when I saw the finish line just ahead. It looked just like I remembered it from all those hours before. (It had only been 50 minutes or so, they told me later, but I’m still not sure.)

All that lay between me and glorious rest was a short hill, one last test designed to break my will. After 15-plus miles, it all came down to the last 100 yards. If I conquered the hill, the day was a victory; if I couldn’t the day was a failure.

At the bottom of the hill, I summoned all my remaining energy for the last triumphant push. I stood up on the pedals, and pushed down hard. My legs ached and trembled, but the bike moved forward.

Soon, I was on level ground. I hit the finish line and tagged Brendan, never so amazed by the triathletes who not only preceded the bike race with an ocean swim, but then followed that with a three-mile run.

At that point, walking to my car was enough of a challenge for me.

Brendan’s story:

Brendan’s Triathlon Tip: Pick better teammates

As I drove back from Scarborough Beach along Black Point Road with two friends, I spotted Ben who was in the first few miles of his 15- mile ride. We honked and yelled, “Go Ben,” out the window. Luckily, he wasn’t too startled and managed to stay on his bike.

As I arrived a few minutes later, at the transition to running, I was surprised to see him pulling up with some of the frontrunners. “What happened?” I asked him. “Did you miss a turn?”

He had missed a turn onto Highland Avenue, and one of the largest loops of the course. There was nothing he could do but turn around and head back, adding several miles to his ride.

“I thought it was strange that that guy was coming in on a mountain bike with some of the frontrunners,” said one of the volunteers. At that point, I knew I had plenty of time to warm up and stretch, so took off for a short warm up run. But I had no idea how much time. My one-mile warm-up left me with about 45 minutes of stretching before Ben finally returned on his borrowed mountain bike, with nearly two hours on the race clock.

“I think we’ve got some time to make up,” he said, laughing as he tagged my hand.

Knowing it was my job to make sure we didn’t finish dead last, I didn’t waste any time sprinting out of the transition area. That task proved to be easy enough. My fresh legs quickly caught a woman twice my age, whose body was no doubt fatigued from the swim and ride. As I passed runner after runner, I almost felt guilty, as though I should apologize to each of them as I passed, “Sorry, I’m on a relay team. You’re doing great, I swear.”

Finishing a short time later, though, I knew that each of them had much more to be proud of than I did. While our amateur Current Publishing team had fun competing in our first triathlon, I think next time I’ll try to do the whole thing.

On Saturday the Current Publishing team of (from left) ben Bragdon, Kate Power and Brendan Moran took on the Scarborough Triathlon with mixed results. The “Current Three” finished with a time of 1:54:23.

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