enlarge John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

The second wave of swimmers chase the elite athletes from the starting line at the Lobsterman Triathlon.

enlarge John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Men’s winner Thomas McWalters falls off his bike as he switches to the running leg of the Lobsterman Triathlon in Freeport

 

 

SOUTH FREEPORT — Mary Miller started to cough. "Excuse me, I still have some salt water in the back of my throat. I'll get it out."

She turned away for a few seconds, took care of business, and turned back.

"We were talking about how much fun this is, weren't we?"

Streaks of brine on her face did nothing to interfere with her smile. She had just finished Saturday morning's Lobsterman Triathlon, an exercise in endurance and determination.

Miller had jumped into ocean water that numbed exposed hands and feet as she raced for 20-some minutes around a 1,500-meter triangular course. She ran off the beach to her racing bicycle, parked in a rack nearly 200 meters away.

On to the 40-kilometer course over up-and-down South Freeport roads and back to Winslow Park to park the bike and take off on a 10-kilometer run, returning again for the finish at the oceanside campground. Listen to the applause, embrace or shake hands with fellow competitors and worry about aching muscles the next morning. Fun.

"It is," said Tom McWalters of Hartford, Conn., the individual winner for the second straight year. His bike got away from him, nearly spilling him head-first onto the ground as he finished that portion of the triathlon. There was no time to blame or sulk. McWalters, 27, a former cross country runner, simply kept going. Aaron Colman of Portsmouth, N.H., was right behind.

Men and women have competed in triathlons for decades, but the competition is far off the radars of most Americans. Too bad. In this sport you take on the competition, the elements, and the pain from your own limitations.

Eight hundred competitors from 24 states and Canada entered the Lobsterman. They love the scenery and the course, they say, even if ocean temperatures in September seem frigid. Two girls in the procession of swimmers walking to the beach asked if they'd get warm-up time. They didn't appear to be kidding.

Cowbells and barking dogs greeted the wave of elite swimmers starting the race. Several more waves, each wearing their own color-coded swim caps, followed. About 20 minutes later, Catherine Sterling, 32, a science and biology teacher at Kents Hill School near Augusta, was first out of the water.

No, she didn't notice the cold, she said later. It was the strong breeze that kicked waves into whitecaps making it even more difficult to spot the buoy course markers. She wandered off course, wasting time, until finding a better direction.

A collegiate swimmer at Dartmouth, Sterling was overtaken by McWalters and other male competitors to finish 10th overall and first among women. "You just go out hard in the swim and the bike and hope you have enough left in the run."

Miller, 29, of Eliot, walked up, offering a big smile and congratulations. Miller was the second woman to finish. Her goal is to make the U.S. Olympic team for the 2012 Games in London. She's read that it takes 10,000 hours of training and competition to be among the best in her sport.

"I'd like to cut that in half. I have to be patient. I've done so much physically and now I have to step back and take it all in, mentally."

Miller has put a successful career in marketing on hold to train. If she was a runner or a gymnast or a basketball player, people would understand. But a triathlete? Miller doesn't mind explaining her priorities.

John Wilkinson, 38, an attorney in Portsmouth, N.H., was a competitive swimmer at the University of California-Berkeley. Friends encouraged him to enter triathlons. "I've trained for one sport. I didn't want to train for three," said Wilkinson. He did anyway, competing as a triathlete for the first time this year. He finished 33rd overall Saturday.

Ryan McCalmon, a former champion distance runner at Cheverus High, limped around the finish area. He completed the swim segment, the weakest of three disciplines for him, and finished the bike race. He got 200 yards...