Ten years ago this month, I waded into Seneca Lake in upstate New York wearing a wetsuit.
Almost a year earlier, I had met Glenn Reisweber, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was executive director of the Lime Hollow Nature Center a few miles from my home in Cortland.
He invited me to join a small exercise and social group called the Dew Crew. They exercised together in the mornings six days a week. They had competed in some triathlons and were preparing for the Musselman half-ironman the following year. It would be the longest race they had entered.
I had been exercising alone a lot for months, and I said I would join them.
I was learning to swim at the time, the first time I had done more than splash around in the water since I took swim lessons in our town pool when I was in second grade.
So I trained with the Dew Crew through the fall, winter and spring, getting up at 5:30 a.m. and driving to a pool or a trail or a country road to exercise.
Then came race day.
The Musselman starts with a 1.2-mile swim, immediately followed by a 56-mile bike ride and a half-marathon.
I had only trained and run long distance once, nearly 30 years earlier in 1986, when I ran a marathon. Limping to work the next day, I swore I would never run long distances again.
I also didn’t own a bike and hadn’t ridden one for decades. I went to a small local bike shop, and the owner built me a Franken-bike from an old frame and spare parts. It was heavy and totally wrong for racing, but it was cheap, and that was good enough for me.
As the Musselman was about to start, I noticed my friends each had a band on an ankle. I asked what they were, and they told me the bands were timing chips to record the three portions of the triathlon.
I ran back to the staging area, rummaged through my bag, grabbed the timing band and ran back to the starting area, where I walked into the lake.
It was a long, tiring and painful race. I was fading halfway through the run, walking the course when my friend Glenn, a long-time marathon runner, came along.
“Stick with me,” he said. “We’ll stop at every water break; otherwise we’ll run.”
I stayed with him, and we finished together in just under seven hours. The time was not great, but finishing was the best I had hoped for.
Musselman was not just a peak for me, but a new beginning. I entered triathlons and other races every year with the Dew Crew and sometimes by myself.
There was a structure to my life, and a support system for exercising and socializing in the Dew Crew. I lost that with my move to Delaware in late October last year. I need to connect with a local network to help get back into those habits, but I’m not sure if it will be quite like the Dew Crew.
-
Working It Out is the reincarnation of a column by the same name that reporter Kevin Conlon wrote weekly for more than six years for the Cortland Standard newspaper, where he worked as city editor before joining the Cape Gazette staff.
Kevin Conlon came to the Cape Gazette with nearly 40 years of newspaper experience since graduating from St. Bonaventure University in New York with a bachelor's degree in mass communication. He reports on Sussex County government and other assignments as needed.
His career spans working as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers in upstate New York, including The Daily Gazette in Schenectady. He comes to the Cape Gazette from the Cortland Standard, where he was an editor for more than 25 years, and in recent years also contributed as a columnist and opinion page writer. He and his staff won regional and state writing awards.
Conlon was relocating to Lewes when he came across an advertisement for a reporter job at the Cape Gazette, and the decision to pursue it paid off. His new position gives him an opportunity to stay in a career that he loves, covering local news for an independently owned newspaper.
Conlon is the father of seven children and grandfather to two young boys. In his spare time, he trains for and competes in triathlons and other races. Now settling into the Cape Region, he is searching out hilly trails and roads with wide shoulders. He is a fan of St. Bonaventure sports, especially rugby and basketball, as well as following the Mets, Steelers and Celtics.
