Party Tour

Our first trip to this race was last year's 19th anniversary, and we just had to come back for the 20th. Some races grow with the times and others don't. This one, thankfully, doesn't. It's a throwback to triathlons of old, that is, this race is low on hassle and high on fun. No lines to check in, no lines to to get numbered, no lines to rack your bike, and most important, no lines to take care of your business in the morning.

I'm not sure why, but my old-man age group turned out to be the toughest of the day. George Esahek-Gage (45) took second overall, I was 9th overall (48), and ex pro and Flagstaff local Nick Martin (47) finished 10th overall. Not too many spots left for the other age groups to fight over.

As Mountainman was celebrating its 20th, race director Eddie Carlin (right) had the event on its best behavior. The pre race literature said that there would be lots of blow up things at the start/finish area, and he didn't dissappoint. Having wrangled myself and my RV into the transition area as night security, I was witness to the generators blowing up things starting at 2AM.

Eddie Carlin puts on a lot of races in Arizona and Nevada (Las Vegas in particular). "Our flagship event is the BlueWater Triathlon in October," Eddie told me. "It's in Parker, and that's the race you ought to come to. Just when it's getting chilly up where you live, we've got a nice warm-weather race waiting for you."

The Mountainman isn't just a pretty race, it has a nice personality too. The star of Mountainman (besides the race starters, who were, in fact, representative facsimiles of mountain men) is Flagstaff itself.

Its is a great town to visit. A very dog-friendly area, we had no trouble taking our mutt out to eat with us. In fact, my girlfriend travels with Beavis and Butthead (her two guinea pigs), and they spent the whole breakfast munching on the window box flowers at our table. The best towns are politically incorrect.

Flagstaff is an hour from the Grand Canyon, and the course sits aside Mount Humphreys, which at 12,000'+ is Arizona's tallest point. The town, the roads—everything—is cut out of a forest of ponderosa and jeffrey pines. There's a quaint and historic downtown section, and it's a college town.

As for the race itself. If you live in the Southwest and you want to race scenic, it helps if you don't mind the altitude. If you want your race course to be green and blue instead of tan and brown, that's going to often require a starting elevation of 4000' or 5000' above sea level. Or, in the case this race, 7000'.

Racing at altitude is not as daunting as you might think. You just have to remember to keep your effort below a certain threshold. We're all breathing the same air, or lack of it. The difficulty comes when you go harder than you ought for a specific patch. When you go anaerobic at 7000', you feel it a lot more than you do at sea level. It's harder to climb out of oxygen debt.

This is especially true right when the gun goes off. Swimming is the hardest thing to do at altitude, because your breathing is metered. You can only breathe for a given amount of work, i.e., every other stroke. So if you go out too hard, you're likely to be hanging onto the first buoy.

Don't let the altitude dissuade you. Mountainman is a classy event. Put it on your next year's schedule.