My First Triathlon!

Blogging is a funny thing. I started with one purpose in mind (to hypothesize about all-weather runners, or something), which morphed into another (describing the weather and philosophizing about life on a winter running path, basically), which started morphing into something else...But I'm not sure what. Now that the weather has been pleasant I have been less inspired to write. I need to find another angle. I'm disappointed that I haven't written in the last month or so. It would be nice to have a record leading up to.......

MY FIRST TRIATHLON!!!


That's right! Eric and I did the Batavia Triathlon today!!! It was awesome. I'm in love. (Of course, I'm always in love with something.....)

The event broke down like this:



Friday night. I think I got 6 hours of sleep. 8 would have been nice, but the sun woke me up and I had some nervous energy.

Saturday. Ate a bagel with vegan cream cheese, I worked (4 massages), had an apple for lunch (not the best idea, probably), bought appropraite sunglasses (thank goodness!) and a water bottle, dinner at Dharma Garden, saw Lucy Kaplansky at the Old Town School (I love her!). I slept over at Eric's. I think we went to sleep at about 12:30am.


Sunday.

3:00-3:10am Wake up

3:30am Load up Eric's bike and head out of town

4:30am Pick up Eric's Tri Packet

5:00am Unload from car, walk over the chipping and marking station with bikes and trigear. Here we got our ankle straps with chips, had our shoulders marked with our race numbers, and the back of our calves marked with our AGES! It's rather interesting to be able to look around and see everyone's age. It reenforces in my mind the idea that age last little to do with the number. But more on that later.

5:30am-ish After "setting up our transition stations" (this is the jargon term for laying out your shit so that when you get back from the swim, you don't have to be searching through your backpack for your sunglasses), we went to the bathroom. This was fun. There's a long long long-ass line, but if you're a girl, you just skip the line and go into the women's bathroom (of course) where not only is there NO line, but there's an abundance of empty stalls! How fun! I wonder if some stars shifted in my astrological reading or something, because lately everywhere I go the men have the long line and I have no bathroom line (Shellac show, Propagandhi show...and apparently Triathlons too!). After I utilized the ladies room, I stood in line with Eric a bit...and right behind us was Mark McNeill! He is one of my favorite massage teachers and massage therapists of all time and he's an all around great laid-back guy. He's done quite a few tris and marathons and such at an elite level and it was great to see him. He really talked up this event.

I pretty much talked to everyone I was around, telling them this was my first time, and about how I was nervous, etc. And everyone was super nice, giving me words of encouragement, and asking me afterwards how everything was... Anyhow, I'm getting ahead.

So Eric's line was really really long. He said that all the urinals were open too, everyone was heading for the stalls. "Gotta get the shit out." Important stuff to think about for these sorts of events.

The big question of the hour for us was "to wetsuit or not to wetsuit." The water was definitely tolerable, but we had wetsuits, and it wasn't warm per se. So we decided to suit up.

5:55am. Back at the Transition zone. And....the Transition zone was closing. I had all these silly thoughts of not being in the right place at the right time. How silly! Of course with 500 people milling about, there's going to be someone telling them what to do!

And then everyone got in a long line roughly in numerical ordered, and every 5 seconds someone ran into the water. Two laps around (400m) the "facility" and out to the transition zone...Okay, now I'm finally trying to finish this blog in now Nov 2007...oh, dear. I was wearing a wet suit that was two big. I had bought that one at a scuba shop. It was a unisex shop (bad idea for someone with my build!). I returned it and bought an Ironman suit from Fleet Feet (a running/tri store), which proceeded to fit me very nicely for the remainder of the summer.

We changed into biking clothes. Went for a 13 mile bike ride, then ran 4 miles. What I wasn't prepared for, was how rubbery my legs would feel for the first 2 miles...

Anyhow, after finishing two more triathlons after this one, I know this one was really great. As awkward as the swim course was, the people were wonderfully friendly. The run course was very pleasant, along the river. The post-race deal was great too. There were some PT-type people there who were stretching people for free, everyone got a free beer with a tag on their bib, there was music...and it just had a joyous feeling to it! Yay!

And this is a very anti-climatic blog post. I apologize if you've read this whole thing. But perhaps that says something. For years (like, since I was a little kid watching my dad swim triathlons with binoculars) I wanted to do them. For (how many years?) I've been intimidated by them. But now? Not so much. Now I think, if I can do them, anyone can do them. How silly, right? In the end, they're not a big deal. You go out and do a little swimming, you put on some biking shoes and doing a little biking, you put on your running shoes....and, well, that's the hardest part, those first 2 miles of running. But everyone is feeling it then so it's okay. So you do a little run. You feel great, for a bit. Then you (I mean I) feel really cranky until I've had my nap...

:)