DT Active Life 050617 for web-REVISED

FIVE WAYS TO
It’s Spring and the are bikes coming out in droves!
Whether you’re out on the roads or out on the trails, here
are 5 ways to get the most from your ride.
1
From Running to Ironman Triathlons:
Nick Marcantonio’s Rise
By Alex Kochon • Photo by Niles Gagnon
There’s something about Canadian
pro triathlete Lionel Sanders
that speaks to Glens Falls
graduate Nick Marcantonio. He did it
backwards, Marcantonio explained,
jumping into triathlons at age 22 and
starting off with the ultimate beast
of the swim-bike-run races: the Ironman
(2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike
and 26.2-mile run, in that order, no
breaks).
“He just jumped into it, randomly
borrowed his mom’s credit card, same
thing I did to be honest,” Marcantonio,
23, said with a laugh. “He kind of went
against the grain … backwards
from what normal people do, so I
connected with him.”
Marcantonio is locally known
10 | DACKS & TOGA activelife
for his cross-country running
and track achievements. He won
Class B sectionals as a Glens
Falls senior and was a three-time
Division III All-American at SUNY
Cortland. Two years ago, he decided
to take on triathlons the “backwards”
way, starting with the longest-distance
race first. While watching Ironman
Lake Placid for the first time, he
signed up that day for next year’s race.
Despite its roughly $700 registration
cost, the race typically sells out immediately.
Committed to running through his
senior season at Cortland, Marcantonio
spent the next year dabbling more
seriously in swimming and biking.
“I would bike probably three times a
week and then swim whenever I could.
My swimming was really bad,” he said.
Then last May, two months before
the race, he was hit by a car while riding
his bike in Hudson Falls. He suffered
road rash and a minor back injury,
and took a month to recuperate
and get back on his bike again.
Out for Ironman Lake Placid, he deferred
his entry to race Ironman Maryland
on Oct. 1, 2016, instead, and
began working with Kevin Crossman,
a local triathlon coach, Glens Falls
physical education teacher and varsity
swim coach.
“Kevin coached me in grade school
in P.E., so I’ve known Kevin for a while
and I knew he had done Ironmans,”
Marcantonio explained. “He had a finishing
plaque of him doing Lake Placid
in his office and I would look at it every
Two years ago, he decided
to take on triathlons the
“backwards” way, starting with
the longest-distance race first.
once in a while and it caught my eye.
… He definitely was the first person to
implant it in my mind and it kind of
stuck with me.”
As part of his 12-week plan leading
up to Maryland, Marcantonio raced his
first triathlon last August, the Fronhofer
Tool Triathlon in Cambridge. He
finished second overall in the Olympicdistance
race (0.93-mile swim, 25-mile
bike, 6.2-mile run).
Then in September, Marcantonio
made the jump to the Big George Half
Iron distance in Lake George, which he
won with a course record of 4 hours,
8 minutes and 3 seconds. One month
later at his Ironman debut in Baltimore,
he won his 18-24 age group
and placed ninth overall. While the
swim had been canceled, he finished
the 112-mile bike in 4:11:38 hours,
and the run — his first marathon — in
nearly 3 hours flat. By winning his age
group in Maryland, he qualified for the
2017 Ironman World Championship in
Kona, Hawaii, this coming October.
On April 22, Marcantonio planned
to race his second Ironman, the North
American Championship in Texas, to
prepare for Kona. And after Kona on
Oct. 14, he plans to scale back the
distances.
“Once I finish Kona, I’m not doing
another Ironman until I’m late 20’s,
30’s,” he said. “I want to focus on the
half and Olympic distances. More
from a developmental aspect, I
won’t probably hit my peak racing
ability in Ironman until I’m early
30’s, mid 30’s. The guys winning
the World Championships are seasoned
veterans. They’ve been out
there for 10, 15 years. If I want to
compete the way I want to, I’m going
to save that for another 10 years
down the road.”
In addition to the training advice he
receives from Crossman, Marcantonio
knows his stuff. He studied fitness
development at Cortland, was an assistant
cross-country coach at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy,
and is a personal trainer at the Glens
Falls YMCA.
“If I can race professionally, that’s
the end goal,” Marcantonio said of his
triathlon aspirations. “However long
that happens, it could be next year,
it could be the year after that. … If it
lasts two years, four years, five years,
I just want to do it. It could last a season,
but I want to say I raced professionally.”
– Continued