The 57-year-old Fulton Savings Bank VP recently completed the National Senior Games triathlon in California. He talks about his performance and how he stays in shape

Q. What was the triathlon like?
A. The triathlon was held at Redwood City, which is about seven miles away frowm where the Stanford University crew team trains. It was a neat course because you swim in the bay of the port. It’s salt water and it was warmer than I anticipated. They prepared us for 62-degree water and it was 67. Even that little difference makes it better. It was very comfortable. Everyone but one person used a wet suit. The bike course was unique; it was a very flat, level road course and they laid out a 4.2-mile course with a couple sharp turns and couple sweeping turns. You made three laps around that particular course. What I was not used to was the close racing. It was run so that the 50-59-year-olds went first, then five minutes later the 60-69-year-old men went, then everyone after that. They did the same thing for the women. For the first two laps it was just the guys that were with me in the 50-59 group. We had it pretty much to ourselves. The third lap had a lot of people on the course. You had to be careful. It was some close racing. Once that particular piece was done, you headed back to the bay where your transition area was and they had laid out the 5K run. It was a .76-mile lap and you did four of those. It was very flat and again, by the third lap there were a lot of the other competitors from the other groups filtering in. It was a different experience.

Q.  How did you do?
A. I ended up 32nd out of 110 total competitors, which is good. I was very happy. That includes men and women. There was one 88-year-old man and he completed the whole thing. The biggest number of competitors was the 50-59 men and women, and 60-69 had almost the same amount, and then it tapered off dramatically. In the 50-59 group there were 16 of us men. I ended up at eighth right in the middle, which I was very happy with. When I had qualified for this and done the Empire State Senior games, my time had been about one hour and 22 minutes. My time was one hour and 15 minutes. I think part of that was a function of the course being level and the fact that I got in pretty good shape for the course. I heard some of the other guys talking as we were setting up and many did marathons regularly or Iron Man competitions, the truly crazy stuff. So you had some people that were pretty experienced and in darn good shape. I averaged almost 19 mph on the bikes. I was very happy with that. It was a great experience. You had people from all over the country competing. You were supposed to have finished one or two at your age group in your state competition. I think they opened it up to the top three, because it’s a long trip out there.

Q. How did you enjoy the area?
A. One of the reasons I even did the trip is that my sister lives right on the Oregon/California border, so my wife and I went back to her house for a couple days, which was great. We had spent our honeymoon in the San Francisco area, so it was kind of another little incentive to go back. Stanford University is about an hour south of San Francisco, so that gave us a chance to spend a few days there ahead of the event. It was a nice, great vacation and a great thing to participate in.

Q. Did you see any familiar faces from the Empire State Senior games? Is there a sense of community among the participants?
A. There was a gentleman I talked to from New York in the 60-69 age group from Clinton. The national senior games is a pretty strong organization, and it’s pretty well run, too. They have this all figured out pretty well, and stage it once every other year. If you’re in this long enough you probably do build up relationships with some people. For me, this was my first crack at it. In two years it’s in Houston, which I think I’ll pass on, but in four years it’s in Cleveland when I’ll be in the 60-69 age group and I might have a crack at it.

Q. Do you have any plans to do any more events like these?
A. Not in the immediate future. Of course the Syracuse YMCA does stage a very similar event each year down at Green Lakes State Park and these events are becoming more popular. There’s one in Skaneateles, too. If someone was really inclined to do this, you could do seven or eight of these over the course of June through September. I usually do one or two 5K road races and an 8K once in a while. These are fun. One or two a year is certainly sufficient. These things used to be kind of rare. Now you could do six, seven, eight of these without driving more than an hour in any direction in Central New York.