Triathlon report

The fourth and final triathlon of the series was not a triathlon after all. More on that in a bit.

After a long day of visiting with family and traveling to New Orleans, I was sound asleep by 10 the night before the triathlon, only to be awakened by the boys next-door having an impromptu patio concert a little past midnight. Ah, college boys and their guitars. I was able to get back to sleep, out of which I was jolted by the strummy strummy ringtone of the 3:30 cell phone alarm. Somehow I was alert enough to make a peanut butter sandwich and get all of my things together. My friends picked me up at 4:30, and we hit the road in the darkness, listening to an excellent mix CD with songs like "Fergalicious" and "Bootylicious" and trying to put together coherent sentences for conversation.

The setting for the event was very woodsy. So woodsy that when we stepped out of the car two hours later, the mosquitoes immediately attacked. I'm not sure what it is with me and bug bites before a race, but there you go. I sprayed on a bunch of sunscreen to try to kill the itchy, burning sensation overtaking my skin. As we unloaded our bags and made our way to the transition area to set up and pick up our packets and what have you, it was announced that the swimming leg of the triathlon had been canceled because a boater had gone missing the night before in another part of the lake. We all just kind of stood there kind of dumbsquizzled, not sure what to do, wearing our swimsuits and flip flops and holding goggles in one hand and swim caps in another. Of course we were sad about the boater but sort of also regrouping as we shifted our focus as to how the event would now go. Flip flops were exchanged for sneakers as they switched the swim to a run, and I changed out of my swimsuit into my very stylish biking/running ensemble, and our transition spots were rearranged to accommodate the fact that we no longer needed to dry off or put on shoes after swimming, and so forth.

We set out for the run, and I deliberately took it pretty easy. The fact that I finished two miles in 19 minutes goes to show me that it was not a full two miles, as that pace is physically impossible for me even at a full sprint, which I most certainly was not doing. But fine by me. Because the bike route -- sweet heavens above. It was super hilly. Way hillier than anything I have ever done before. The first one appeared out of nowhere and might as well have been Mt. Kilimanjaro for how intimidated I was by it. My mouth dropped open and I said aloud, "You have GOT to be kidding me." I tried to shift gears to make it easier to pedal, but that just made me feel like I wasn't getting anywhere. This happened hill after hill after hill. One of them was an overpass over the interstate, which was kind of scary in addition to being impossible to climb, and I felt really sorry for anyone who might have a fear of heights. The best part of the bike ride was a little patch of road where the trees branched out over it, almost completely shading it except for little bursts of sunlight. It was so pretty, honestly, that I almost forgot how pissed off I was and how much I was hating life. The hills were so tough that I went to a really dark place in the last mile or so of the biking, the depth to which I had not sunk since some of my longer training runs (10 miles, 11 miles) during half-marathon training in 2007, during which I felt like I might black out due to the force with which I hated the sport and the entire universe with my entire being. That is how I started to feel on this bike ride. My knees began to ache. I started getting very slow and wobbly. I started worrying about running out of gatorade. I was miserable. I have no idea how long it took me to finish the 15 miles. Dear Lord, just get me off this bike, I will run a thousand miles. Luckily I only had to run two. Which were fine, especially when volunteers poured cups of water all over my head, soaking my shirt to the gills.

A note on the hills: I couldn't decide once it was all said and done if I would have preferred to know in advance about the hills. What would have been the point, except to mentally prepare? It's not like there are a bunch of hills around here that I could train on. It just kind of seems like the race website would have said something about it so people who weren't ready for them could make a fair evaluation of whether or not to sign up. One of my friends wasn't confident on her brand new bike with going downhill, which was pretty steep at times, so she got off her bike and ran it on all the downhills, which was kind of a crazy experience, I'm sure. Oh, well. What's done is done and we all survived.

Once we were done, we stood around hydrating and stretching and eating some nice homemade post-race food (perk of a fairly small event) like brownies and gingerbread and cinnamon rolls (healthy!) ... the race runner announced some time later that the last racer was on her way in, and so we all gathered around to cheer for her as she crossed the finish line and got the medal around her neck. She was 60-something and fought hard to finish. It was awesome.

It was a fun road trip and a very hot and exhausting but good race day under the circumstances. I would have liked to do the open water swim instead of two runs, but I understand that the right call was made on that. I thought this might be it for me as far as triathlons go for the year, but this morning I woke up and signed up for another one in a few weeks. They're just fun, and I'm not ready to be done yet.