Top Field to Soak Up Whisky
By Scott Sandsberry
Yakima Herald-Republic, Thursday, July 17, 2003
That 12-mile, relentlessly uphill cycling slog from the river's edge at Vantage to the top of Whisky Dick Ridge on Sunday won't be Cary Steinman's first ride of the morning.
Even before Steinman hops in the car for the drive from her Moxee home to Vantage and steps gingerly into the Columbia River for the swim stage of the Whisky Dick Triathlon, she will already have been on her bicycle.
For an hour.
Riding, say, up over Konnowac Pass and back.
For a warm-up.
"1 have to warm up; it'll be a long day," said Steinman, who is in position to challenge for a second straight Cascade Championship Series title after finishing second two weeks ago in the Valley of the Sun Triathlon.
"I'm 37, so I'm in a lot of pain on the bike unless I'm warmed up, just a lot of lactic acid. 1 feel like crap if I'm not warmed up; that's a motivator. It's not that I'm trying to be Superwoman, but 1 know what I'll feel like if 1 don't warm up."
Of course, most human beings would tell you that a one-mile river swim, a bike ride of 26.4 miles (the first dozen of them uphill) and an 8.8-mile run, all done in temperatures approaching 90 degrees, would tend to warm one up.
Such is the challenge facing the athletes who will compete Sunday in the Whisky Dick, and such is the physical preparedness of those athletes.
For Steinman and Kyle Dees of Selah, the day will be just another long workout as they prepare for next month's Canada Ironman Triathlon, a qualifier for the Hawaii Ironman World Championships. Were Steinman not competing in the Whisky Dick, Steinman and her husband, Scott, one of the Yakima Valley's top competitive cyclists, would have spent Sunday pedaling on a 100-mile training ride.
For many others, the event is pure competition and, for triathletes,
a rare shot at some prize money.
The Whisky Dick is the second and final leg of the Cascade Championship
Series, in which the male and female competitors with the best cumulative
finishes in the July 6 Valley of the Sun and Sunday's race each win $200.
The Whisky Dick committee is throwing in the extra incentive of another
$100 to its race winners.
Steinman won the women's series last year and got a good start this year, placing second to Tacoma's Susan Marr in the Valley of the Sun. Amy Jo Turi of North Bend, also entered in Sunday's race, was third behind the two at Valley of the Sun, and the 27-year-old will be tough to beat; she won last year's Whisky Dick by more than five minutes over Steinman.
The men's competition should be special – as talent-laden a field as the race has ever seen since its heyday in the late 1980s, when it was a qualifier for the Hawaii Ironman and routinely drew upwards of 400 athletes.
The top contenders figure to include the first-, second- and fourth-place finishers in the 2002 Whisky Dick, Andrew Neff of Bellevue, Kevin Rieke of Leavenworth and Mick Desserault of Yakima (also fourth in the Valley of the Sun in 2002 and 2003); three Valley of the Sun champions in Kelsey Backen of Yakima (2003), Rieke (2002) and Chip Cooper of Tacoma (2000); and Michael Bergquist of Spokane, who will be on the United States team in next month's World Military Triathlon Championships. Cooper and Bergquist led this year's Valley of the Sun until taking a wrong turn on the bicycle course. For Backen, a 24-year-old with only six triathlons on his resume, facing that kind of talent is a daunting challenge, but one he relishes.
"Definitely, I need to race people of really good quality to I find out what 1 can do," he said. I "I don't have anything, really, to I lose - 1 have everything to gain. 1 haven't got much experience, so I this is the kind of thing 1 need to do ... and the sooner the better."
Backen is a natural for a multi-discipline sport; he competed at the collegiate level in both basketball and distance running, wishes he had gone into decathlon training and has years of strength training behind him. That very versatility is what drew him to triathlons.
"With running, 1 could be pretty good at that, but 1 didn't see myself as being really elite," he said. "I'm not built like a distance runner, and 1 didn't think 1 had what it took to be elite. But I've always been pretty good at biking without really trying. The only question was swimming. If 1 can get as good at swimming as I am at biking and running, 1 can be great at this."
For that reason, it's the swim stage of Sunday's race, not that grueling, uphill bike stretch, that concerns Backen.
"I've heard some stories about the Columbia and what it's done to some guys," he said. "I've never swam in the Columbia, so that in itself makes me a little nervous. The (bicycle-stage) hill is tough, but it doesn't scare me, because I've done it in training and I've done it hard. 1 know what to expect. 1 know 1 can hammer up hills fairly well.
"I figure if I can get off the bike within four, maybe five minutes of whoever is in first, 1 can win."
So, too, can Cary Steinman, though she knows Turi – and Marr, if the Tacoma standout is a late entrant ,-will present a big challenge. This year, Steinman passed Turi on the bike stage of the Valley of the Sun but couldn't catch Marr. Last year, Turi passed Steinman on the bike stage of the Whisky Dick and then extended her lead on the run.
Whether she wins or not Steinman expects to get a good workout out of it – harder, if not as long, as the 100-mile ride she would have done otherwise.
"I wouldn't be doing it if 1 didn't think it was worth it,"
Stein man said. "You just can't get enough of those stupid 100-milers
in (Ironman) training.”
Source: Yakima Herald Republic
