There is something about racing in Maine that is hard to resist. Perhaps it’s the miles of coastline and the stunning views to be had at every turn. Maybe it’s the remoteness of the place or the challenge of swimming in water that 75 percent of the time is cold, real cold. Maybe it’s the friendly people or the slogan. Most likely, it’s the lobster.
Whatever the reason might be there is definitely something about Maine that pulls athletes in. And Lobsterman, being one of the most quintessential and beloved races in the state, has drawn quite a field this year. With more than 800 athletes registered to race (and a waiting list that grows exponentially every time we answer our phones), it’s clear that people from down the street in Freeport to down the coast in Florida, up in the mountains of Colorado to the California shoreline, from Canada to Cambridge and Texas to Tennessee have been drinking the Maine Kool-aid. The Lobsterman cometh on Saturday, and along with it, an exceptional group of competitors.
We couldn’t be more excited about our Lobsterman community and the diversity of the field. To get you as excited as us for the big day, we’d like to introduce some of the amazing individuals we’ve met that will be soon traveling this way.
Read their stories here and then look for updates on race day at our Tri-Maine twitter: tri_maine.
Nathan Hawkes
38, Sandown, New Hampshire
It was on one of the challenging hills around his house in Sandown, New Hampshire that Nathan Hawkes started thinking. The hill he was climbing was difficult and part of him wanted to stop but the other part didn’t want to cheat. In that zone, he started to think about friends of his who wouldn’t be able to even attempt the hill—friends with cancer, heart disease, and liver disease. He told himself he was going to get to the top of the hill for Laurie, his friend with a brain tumor. And thinking of her, he found new motivation and didn’t give up.
Later, when he told Laurie what she had inspired him to do, she had been honored, and Nathan felt motivated again. He started spending more time thinking of cancer survivor friends and disease fighters he knew every time he trained. Friends and coworkers began hearing of Nathan’s training dedications and soon they were opening up to him – sharing their own stories of loved ones they knew who were impacted by cancer and poor health. Nathan took every story he heard out on his rides and runs and used the stories of what people were going through to get him over hill after hill.
“I used the energy from their stories to motivate me,” he says. “It allowed me to stick to my schedule and not give up on my training. As life happened and the training became difficult, I knew I had a responsibility to all these people and I never gave up, because I knew they were counting on me. Each training ride I focused on a different person.”
When Nathan raced in Timberman in August, he wore a jersey with ribbons attached all over it – one in honor of each dedication and story he had heard over the course of the training. All of the friends and family and co-workers whose stories he had learned were racing with him and as he faced tough times on the course, he thought of them. “I really wanted to stop on a hill on the run but I could feel the ribbons pulling on my shirt and knew I couldn’t,” he says. “I said each person’s name and they gave me the energy to finish the race.”
His ribbons grow as Nathan continues to hear stories from friends and strangers alike. Just last week a friend told him a story of a niece undergoing multiple brain operations, and he has received dozens emails from people he doesn’t know thanking him for his support. He has used each story to fuel him through his Lobsterman training and will again be wearing his jersey filled with ribbons on race day as he completes his first Olympic distance race. His small mental motivation has snowballed into something big and it’s really exciting for Nathan. He says he may have to retire his ribbon jersey at the end of the season and start with new dedications next year (as it’s getting heavier). There is also talk of starting an inspiration club and having friends join him in racing for dedications next year.
“I’ve enjoyed the training so much more now,” Nathan says. “It means so much more. I know this sounds kind of old-fashioned, but in this day and age, it’s really nice to do stuff for other people.”
Rebecca Hefty
34, Auburn, Maine
For Rebecca Hefty, physical education instructor and girls’ track coach for Edward Little High School in Auburn, Maine, the best way to inspire students to live an active lifestyle is to go out there and show them how it’s done. To step outside your own box, push past your own comfort level, and make the time and effort to reach a goal even when it’s difficult. That’s why she’s racing in the Lobsterman this year: to show her team how it’s done.
“I am always pushing my girls outside of their comfort zone, and I believe I have to do the same,” she says. “I truly believe they perform better that way.”
To challenge herself and get back into triathlons Rebecca “bit the bullet” and signed up for the Lobsterman. She first competed in tris when she was a 20-year-old lifeguard in Wisconsin, but hasn’t since then and now has two kids and a busier schedule. Having been a sprinter in high school and college, she knows a great deal about competition but not as much about long distance runs. She enlisted the advice and knowledge of friends to help strengthen her cycling abilities (and borrowed a few of their pools for her swim training) and then tackled the Kennebunk Fireman Triathlon as a warm up.
What she loves about triathlons, beyond being able to show students that you can still be active outside high school and college, is that anyone can do it – all you need is self confidence. “It doesn’t matter where you finish because everyone around you is there cheering and doing the same thing,” she says. “It’s just a great challenge.”
Rebecca’s goal for the Lobsterman is to finish in under two hours and thirty minutes, and her ultimate dream is to finish an Ironman. But her larger lifetime goal, the one her track team and students can learn the most from, is “to encourage people to take a chance on things they never would have,” she says. “I’m hoping that through racing, I influence my students to do something that somehow challenges them.”
William Widnall
71, Lexington, Massachusetts
Bill Widnall is always surprised that there’s hardly anyone in his age group. “This is so much fun,” he says, “that I look around and wonder where everyone else is!” Perhaps he’s able to think that way at 71 because the other sport he’s known for competing in has no age-specific classifications. (Bill is both a national and a nine-time world sailing champion.) Or maybe it’s because he’s always loved competition and maintains the mentality that as long as he can keep getting on his feet, he’ll keep getting out there.
When Bill heads to the starting line on race day Saturday it will be his third Lobsterman and his tenth year of racing. (Don’t let the decade mark fool you, however, because that means Bill took up the sport of triathlon at the age of 61.) Bill has always been a very active cyclist, riding 5,000 miles each year for years – more on his bike than he put on his car and when his friend was training for Ironman Hawaii he joined her for the 100-mile rides. “There’s a lot of time to talk over 100 miles,” he says. And so his friend talked him into trying triathlon out.
Since starting out, Bill has run three Boston Marathons and joined a New England Masters swim champions team. He does at least some aerobic activity every other day (needing more recovery time than when he was younger). “Being an aerobic sport I can’t expect to beat the 25-year-olds,” Bill says. “I just go out there and try do as well as did the year before. It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve enjoyed being at the top of my age group.”
While sailing his 33-foot sailboat competitively out of Marblehead every Saturday isn’t very similar to the physical training he must endure for the triathlon, it is great preparation for the mental aspect. For some competitions Bill races twice a day, every day for five days and finds that he can out-endure other skippers. The mental intensity he’s learned from triathlons allows his brain to stay sharp and make good decisions in sailing when others tire.
Both sports help feed Bill’s competitive spirit. “I just love competition,” he says. “And as long as Mother Nature keeps me healthy, I’ll keep going.”
Dusty Early
48, Boulder, Colorado
On Lobsterman morning when Dusty Early crosses the finish line, he will be reaching an important milestone in his life. He will not only be completing his first-ever triathlon but he will also be accomplishing a big goal—one he wrote down in a notebook four years ago at a time in life when things felt dark.
Dusty has always been an active person who enjoys being outdoors. He ran in high school and competed in cross country ski races while living in Minnesota. He enjoys hiking and climbing glaciers. But in 2005, when Dusty moved to Boulder, Colorado for his work as an environmental scientist, he became disconnect from the active lifestyle. He had lost his mother in Bangor, Maine in 1995 and along with his move he experienced the onset of severe depression. It was a period of his life where he was frequently commuting and not making time for exercise.
“Intuitively, I knew I needed to get outside and moving,” he says. During the recovery period that followed, Dusty wrote goals to do a triathlon and start a business. Soon after, when glissading down a glacier he lost his ice axe and obtained a severe ankle injury. When the physical therapist started him swimming for exercise, he decided his triathlon training had begun. “I thought if you’re going to do it, the time is now,” Dusty says.
Dusty picked up triathlon resources “by osmosis” from the Boulder crew and began training fairly aggressively. He had swum in the lakes of Maine as a kid and liked the idea of visiting his father (still in Bangor) and a client in Nova Scotia, so when he heard the name “Lobsterman,” he knew it was the race for him.
“Since I started training for competitive events my sense of well-being, inner peace, and happiness has increased enormously,” he says. For Dusty, training in lieu of antidepressants has made a huge difference in recovery. “While on the medication, I could barely get out of bed in the morning, had little motivation, no appetite and became 20 pounds under my ideal weight,” he says. “I only got better after I stopped taking the medication and started training. Now I love to get up early in the morning and go for a run just so that I can see the sun rise and cast its glow on the Flatirons of Boulder.”
Dusty is looking forward to completing the race and continuing to keep exercise outdoors as an important part of his life. He’ll be thrilled to see his father, recently turned 72, cheer him on as he has throughout Dusty’s life, and his cousin Joy who is named after his mother at the finish. And he’ll be proud to have checked a milestone off his list of important things to do in life.
Miriam Weiskind
29, Brooklyn, New York
Miriam Weiskind is crazy about the Lobsterman. Just not the actual lobster part. She grew up in a Kosher home in Ohio and lobster was not part of the menu. When she first came out for the race two years ago she tried a bite but wasn’t blown away. She was, however, captivated by the beautiful venue, the enthusiasm of the crowds in town, and the cows along the course. (“I might be the only person not to eat lobster and to moo at the cows as I go by,” she says.) Lobster or no lobster, the race definitely had her hooked and she’s just as excited to return again this year.
Miriam is one of a group of 16 New Yorkers coming out together to race in the Lobsterman. Having been a runner since the age of 11 and a high school soccer player, she was interested in an endurance event and signed up for a triathlon with Team in Training four years ago. She was hooked instantly, and every season since then, she has been a mentor for the same race. The group of athletes who will be traveling to Lobsterman are all Team and Training mentees she has worked with. “We are a tight group of people that loves to travel together for races,” she says. “Lobsterman is our baby.”
Since Lobsterman is also part of her training for the New York City Marathon, like last year she will run an extra loop of the run course. Her goal is to finish similar to last year and if that happens to be one minute faster, she’ll be happy. No matter what the weather brings, this 3rd year attempt won’t scare her. “I’ve experienced the worst weather (two years ago) and the best (last year) and no matter what, I know what I have to endure to get through it,” she says.
Miriam is looking forward to having a blast and enjoying the scenery most of all. “But maybe,” she adds, “this year I’ll enjoy the food.”
Joe Gorfinkle
50, Lake Placid, New York
Maine is a place that holds great memories for Joe Gorfinkle. He fondly remembers vacationing on the coast of Maine with his daughter Janelle at two years old—hiking along the rocky shoreline, and giving her a bath in the kitchen sink in a house in Freeport. For the Lobsterman, he’ll be returning to Maine with Janelle to make a new set of Maine memories – the racing kind.
Joe and Janelle will be competing in the Lobsterman Triathlon together. It will be their second time racing in the same event and only the start of their journey to Lake Placid where they will both compete in 2010.
Back in the 1980s Joe remembers watching an Ironman race and thinking that it was something he wanted to do someday. Then in 2005, he came across a Team in Training advertisement in the American Way magazine on a flight and he knew in an intuitive way that it was the perfect time for him to try out a triathlon. He was going through a separation at the time and his father was fighting a winning battle with Leukemia. “I thought what a perfect thing – something to do in support of my father and myself.”
That first Olympic tri in Maui led to his first Ironman in Lake Placid in 2006 and two more in the years to follow. Lake Placid had such a powerful affect that Joe even purchased a home there. Through the dedication of racing and the physical release, he was able to get through the changes in his life and his divorce.
Janelle came to watch her father compete at a triathlon in 2006 in California but didn’t have much interest in competing herself until this past year, when she experienced a break-up of her own. Living in Boston, she followed in her father’s footsteps to the triathlon world – signing up for a Team in Training event in New Hampshire and turning to athletics to work out a stressful situation. Joe joined her in competing in the Mooseman and was excited to be there as Janelle finished her first race. One month after, Janelle was calling to get her dad to sign up alongside her for Lake Placid.
“It’s something wonderful for us to do together,” Joe says. “I know from doing Ironman it’s not something you do alone and so it’s exciting to be able to support Janelle through her rigorous training.” They will race in a series of events along the way, and Lobsterman will be one of them. This race in particular, means something even more special to Joe. “For me, it’s a chance to reunite and re-bond now that Janelle is an adult,” he says. “There are some parallels in our lives now and it’s great to share something on both a personal growth and an athletic basis. We’re going to have a lot of fun.”
Mary Miller
29, Boulder, Colorado (But originally Eliot, Maine)
Mary Miller is a Tri-Maine sponsored athlete and a local hometown girl from Eliot, Maine. She’s also a professional triathlete racing all over the country and aspiring to make it to the 2012 Olympics. (Plus, she happens to be the big sister of our Creative Director Pete Miller!) We’re very proud of Mary and thrilled that she is coming back East to race in the Lobsterman.
Read more about Mary and follow her training and race results on her blog at http://gomarygo.blogspot.com/
We also wanted to wish good luck to all of our previous 2009 Featured Athletes who are racing in the Lobsterman too!
- Mike Doyle
- Brian Bishop
- Alayna and Cassie White
- Rob Hubbs
Click here for Featured Athletes from the 2009 Urban Epic Boston Triathlon!
Click here for Featured Athletes from the 2009 Zone Urban Epic Portland Triathlon! |
