PRINCETON: Area trio completes Ironman Triathlon

By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor
Martin Johnson, Claire Scarpa and Steve Niedzwiecki all went to last Sunday’s Subaru Ironman Mont-Tremblant in Canada with varying levels of experience.
But one thing the three had in common was the realization that completing the grueling event wouldn’t be possible with the support of their family through the training that leads up to the competition.
“My wife and family are my support group,” said Johnson, a Princeton resident. “What they have to put up with is amazing. We have to get up early hours in the morning and go out on the bike and train. Sometimes it is a good thing because with some sports, like golf, you might just go out once a week, but by the time you’re done, it is always the middle of the day. We are up at 6 or 6:30 so even if it is a four-hour practice, we’re done by 10:30 or 11, so there is still a lot of the day left to spend with the family.”
Johnson did his first full Ironman Triathlon last year at Lake Placid in New York and has competed in half Ironman events as well. Niedzwiecki, a Pennington resident, completed his sixth Ironman when he competed at Mont-Tremblant last weekend. And Scarpa, a Montgomery resident, was competing in her first Ironman.
The Ironman Mont-Tremblant was held in the Canadian Province of Quebec. The race started with a 2.4 mile swim in Lac Tremblant. The two loop, 112-mile bike course that followed the swim ran through Mont-Tremblant’s forests and low-lying mountains. The race ends with a two loop, 26.2-mile run course.
“My goal was just to finish,” said Scarpa, a teacher and coach in the Montgomery school district. “This was my first one ever, so I just wanted to finish. The goal was to finish in under 17 hours because that’s the cutoff that you have to finish under 17 hours.
There are transition times between events that are recorded and added to the overall time. Thus the overall time registered by the athletes is always slightly higher due to the transition time that comes into play.
“It was a lot of work to prepare for, especially because this was a hilly race. I swam three days a week, biked three days, and would run three or four times a week. I would ride long, hilly routes in the Sourland Mountains. It was definitely grueling. Everyone kept telling me the race was the celebration of all your hard work. It was nine months of really hard work to get ready.”
Scarpa finished the race in 13 hours, 27 minutes and 20 seconds. Her best leg was the swim, where she turned in the 253rd best time in the field of nearly 2,000 with a time of 1:08:23. She completed the 112 mile bike portion in 7:01:15 and the marathon distance 26.2 mile run in 5:06:07. Overall, she finished 216th of 501 women at the event and 1,102 out of 1,937 overall participants.
“I ended up getting a coach to help me and keep me on track,” Scarpa said. “I was lucky to have a supportive husband (Rob) who really understands what it takes to prepare for this. The training takes over your life. I was a walking zombie, getting up early every day. Toward the end I was doing one-and-a-half hour runs and bikes on the same day.”
Scarpa was thrilled to finish and knows just how hard it was to put herself in a position to compete at an Ironman. Having now completed one, she thinks that is probably enough.
“It was about  year ago when Rob said to me you are turning 40 next summer, what big plans do you have,” Scarpa said. “My initial thought was to do Lake Placid because it fell on my birthday weekend. But I was scared of Lake Placid because the bike is so hilly and I would have had to come home for PASDA champs (she coaches the Cherry Valley Country Club swim team) the next day. I looked at some others like Maryland and then I found this one. The weather is always good. I looked at the elevation and saw 1,800 and thought that was not bad. It turned out to be over 1,800 meters, which was over 6,300 feet. That was not fun.
“This is how I celebrated turning 40.”
Johnson had gone through the experience of competing in an Ironman before and was aware of the challenges.
“This year was quite tough for me with a lot of work issues,” Johnson said. “It was very tight. I ended up not quite putting as much effort in as I had previous years. It is crazy. The alarm clock goes off at 5 a.m. I do a lot of training with the Run Around Princeton group. That is where Claire and Steve and I are acquaintances. It’s a group of people with like-minded attitudes. We post when runs are coming up and try to go out together. It can be a Saturday morning and 30 of us will be together.”
In this race, Johnson had an issue with the chain on his bike, which hurt his time on that portion. He still managed to finish in 15:09:13, with a 2.4 mile swim of 1:38:23, a 112-mile bike of 7:07:50, and a 26.2 mile run in 6:01.22.
“I was really pleased with my swim,”  the 43-year-old Johnson said. “I am quite big, with my weight a good amount over 200 pounds. So I am not slight of character or body. I was really pleased with the swim. I got out and got to the bike and had great average speed powering up the hills then I had a chain and gear problem on the highest part of the hill.
“It was unfortunate but that is part of what I love about the sport. You can’t control the weather or fate. Having trained it becomes part of you. You train all year and understand these mistakes can happen and you just take it on the chin. What can you do? You can say things aren’t fair and give up. But I am not going to do that. It’s frustrating because you just lost a personal best. But you can also say not only did I finished an Ironman, but I overcame these additional obstacles.”
Johnson plans to take another crack at an Ironman next year, with plans already in the works to decide in just the right race.
“I love it,” he said of the competitions. “I am already thinking about doing one next year. I want to do it with my brother-in-law, who lives in England. We might do one in Europe, so we are so looking at France, Germany or England.
“It is definitely an endurance sport. The top athletes and pros are racing each other. A lot of it at our age group level is really racing nobody other than yourself. I don’t see the other people on course as competitors. They are part of the reason I will finish. Everyone is there to get everyone through it.”
Niedzwiecki has the most experience of the trio when it comes to competing at the Ironman distance. He finished this last race in 13:19:11. Niedzwiecki completed the 2.4-mile swim in 1:21:00, the 112-mile bike in 6:38:55, and the 26.2-mile run in 4:58:01.
“This was my sixth full Ironman,” Niedzwiecki said. “I have done a whole bunch of shorter ones. I have done 25 Half Ironman races and handful of shorter ones. I know that you never take this distance for granted. It is so much of a challenge. It is like a part-time job and you have to have the support of your family. It takes a lot of time to train leading up to the race. If you have a family, you absolutely have to have their support. I had not done this distance in five years. My wife had lived through those five previous ones and I had taken some time off from competing at this distance.”
Niedzwiecki goes into each competition with an open mind as far as his time. He doesn’t go in with a specific number in mind.
“The first goal is always to finish, because it us such a challenge,” the 48-year-old Niedzwicki said. “You have some time goals in mind. I had never done one on this course at the full distance. I did the half here last year. I didn’t have time goals. I just wanted to enjoy myself. Those of us who do it get some sort of joy out of the suffering.”
The idea that the race ends with a marathon after having swum for over an hour and biked for more than 100 miles isn’t necessarily what most people would call fun. But for those who are part of the Ironman culture, it’s part of the draw.
“It’s funny,” Niedzwiecki said. “You spend six hours on the bike and after that you are really looking forward to the run.”
Niedzwiecki has enjoyed doing some of his training with the other members of the Run Around Princeton group. It has actually given his training a new dimension.
“I didn’t have that in the past,” he said. “It has been kind of a recent thing for me that I connected with them. In the past I trained myself and it was kind of solitary. It is nice to have the camaraderie. I had some friends here at the race and they were cheering us on. It was nice.”
Niedzwiecki isn’t quite sure when his next Ironman will be. But he does have a distant thought in mind when it comes to his Ironman future.
“I don’t think I will do it for another year,” he said. “But I would like to continue as long as I can. My youngest son is pretty athletic and he is only 7. If I could keep doing it long enough so that he could do it with me, that would be something. There are plenty of people in their 60s doing this event.
“What I have found is it inspires me to do other hard things in life. I know if I can accomplish this I can accomplish anything. It is the gift that keeps on giving. We all have challenges in life and I have had my share. This helps me get through everything.”