As promised, the fullbodyspandexsuit.
Can I just say, even with my fluffy ruffles and ridges (i.e. hips) I loved this thing??!!!! Loved!!! (Zoot Women's Ultra Tri Racesuit fyi.) LOVE LOVE LOVE! There was only one drawback to it and it was the fact that it was a onesy and that made for an interesting porta-potty experience. In the dark. There's only one thing weirder than being nearly naked in a porta-potty and that's being nearly naked in the porta-potty in the near pitch black. (No lights, 5 a.m., you know.) I'm just saying. (You're welcome.)
But I felt like catwoman in it and I felt like I had superpowers. Like the "ability to make it in and out of transition in less than 10 minutes because I don't have to change" superpower. It did swish a little like George Costanza's suit in that one Seinfeld episode, but I didn't care too much about the sound. People heard me coming and I didn't have to say, "On your left!" because the swooshing said it all.
So the weather Saturday was awful and we didn't even think there would be a triathlon on Sunday, but then when we woke up and it was pretty clear, we thought the bike might be canceled because of wet roads, but then when we saw the cones going up we knew the bike was on and we got excited. But it was a very special kind of excited because boy were we both so very snippy this morning.
We were both apparently very nervous and the husband kept barking at talking to me and I was kind of trying to get in a zone and then he would get mad because I wasn't listening and may or may not have turned the music up on him and I would get mad that he was talking and maybe briefly considered taking a cab but I had nervous stomach and was really just so nervous I couldn't think straight. And when I'm that nervous and can't think straight I become unresponsive and stuck in my own head.
Anyhoo.
Then we got there and we were still very frazzled but we set up and I put my I-Pod on for a few minutes to channel in some Michael Phelps, Lance Armstrong, and Jackie Joyner. But the wind kicked up and made for a rough ocean, so they had to cancel the swim on account of a current and the possibility of drowning. I was crushed but the husband, not so much. I was only crushed because I was hoping to see if I could do better this time around and now I would not know this and that bothered me. So instead, we ran on the beach for a 1/2 mile, along the area we would have swam, then ran up the beach at the point where we would have exited the water and we still did the bike and run. So it was technically a duathlon instead of a triathlon.
I finished in 1:28, (that's an hour and 28 minutes) 3 minutes behind my husband. I was 22nd out of 44 people in my group. Not too bad. I thought (and hoped and prayed) that without the swim it would be easier.
Um.
Not so.
Crossing over 4 really tall bridges (one with shattered glass everywhere about halfway up which got a couple poor bikers who were stuck changing flats) was really tough and that made for a really slow 5k afterward for me (36 minutes). I really was hoping for better than that, but if I look at the results overall, it was still pretty ok (and I didn't finish last, which really was the primary goal who are we kidding.)
I am still trying to figure out "race day nutrition" and "pre-race nutrition" thing, because I think that will help me when I'm in the thick of it and need reserves. I fought a pretty bad headache afterward all day. But when times got tough, I did play my normal mindgames, like singing military cadences in my head on the run to the tune of "Last Dance with Mary Jane" or cheering on my fellow competitors as I passed, "Good Morning! On your left! You're doing great!" and being extra cheery and saying things like, "This is easy!" as I went up the hill with a couple of other bikers.
What I wanted to say to my fellow bikers as we were riding in little packs going up these hills was, I could do without this ridiculous wind right now! Or this hill is freakin killing me here! But instead, laughing out loud about how "easy" it was (yeah right!) or how we were so close to conquering this bridge made it just a little easier and more pleasant, even with the fire burning in my legs.
Oh mindgames. What would I do without them, really!
Anyway, I am still hooked. I am excited to have tried this wonderful sport (and if you do any biking or running whatsoever I implore you, no matter what your fitness level or endurance level to consider making it a goal of yours too! I am so serious that if I can do this you can too! Plus, you lose weight AND it's fun!)
So I'm going kick my own butt just one more time and go in for one more round at one last triathlon in '09 at the end of October. I think I just gotta give this swim thing another go!
Sunday
Tri 2 Turns Du
blog comments powered by Disqus
