A late post about the TOBAY tri

I know that I haven’t updated my blog since August.  I’m about to train and fund raise for my third triathlon and I never wrote about my second one. 

I was really nervous going into the TOBAY tri.  I know so many people that do that event and even more that volunteer there.  In Tennessee nobody knew me.  It didn't matter if they had cleaned up the finish are before I even got there or if I was followed only by the street sweeper.  At TOBAY I knew tons of people, some of who are excellent triathletes to whom fitness is paramount, who spend months working on shaving two seconds off of their finish time.  What would they think of me just put-putting my way to the end?

Well, there was no hiding it.  They knew that I was there and that I was competing.  I just had to make the best of it.  Knowing other people in the race actually turned out to be fun.  I ran into them in the transition area, joked around, took pictures, and sipped one of their beers between the bike and the run.  I even found out that a friend of mine was right next to me in transition.  (which turned out to be a little embarrassing later.)

The most interesting part of the race was the swim.  I was not worried; Team in Training prepared me well for it.  I was not the fastest swimmer around, but I thought that I wouldn't embarrass myself too much.  I always heard that the swim part of a tri was a dangerous affair, with people kicking and clawing to get ahead of the other swimmers.  I did not have that experience in Tennessee.  I wish that I could say the same for TOBAY.  Somebody hit my face, scratched it a little and knocked my goggles askew.   The goggles felt weird, but kept their seal so I left them.  That was not the interesting part.

About halfway through the swim I did something that you should not do.  I looked up and compared myself to the other swimmers.  That’s when I saw something odd.  The swim section of the race was shaped as a semi-circle.  We entered the water at the boat ramp and swam around an arch of buoys until we exited the water at the beach.   When I looked up I saw a whole lot of swimmers on the right side of the buoys.  They were supposed to be on the left.  Typically you can expect one or two people to misunderstand the rules and get disqualified as a result, but this was well over a third of the athletes.  What was going on?  I kept swimming to the left of the buoys.  The swim was supposed to be half a mile but it seemed awful long to me.  Why was the swim taking so long? I know that I am not fast, but I thought that I was faster than this.  Well, apparently a couple of the buoys got loose and stared drifting away.  Most of us swimmers were unaware and followed them, going way off course.  I still wonder how the other swimmers knew the situation and followed the intended swim course.   I didn't find out any of this until after the race.  I’ll never know how far I went, or if I would have finished the race within the time frame I was hoping for.  Kind of a bummer.  After the swim I saw my transition neighbor heading out for the run.  He had already completed the entire bike segment and I was just getting out of the water.

The bike was relatively uneventful, hilly and challenging, but doable.  The best part of it was being on roads that were closed to other traffic.  There is this hill on 25A that I hate riding down.  Once you pick up some decent speed you have to stop for the intersection at the bottom, then continue up the next hill from a stopped position.  I loved picking up speed and cruising through it. 

The run sucked.  I can’t run.  The run always sucks. 

The Best part of the race was the end.  By that time I had kind of given up on the half walk half jog thing that I try to do.  Mostly I was walking.  Many of my TEAMmates had passed me along the way, cheering me on, so were the volunteers that I knew and the ones that I didn't.  I LOVE being cheered on.

When I got to the end my entire TEAM was waiting for me.  They all cheered and clapped for me then they filed in behind me and ran me across the finish line.  I definitely felt the TNT love!

My official time was 2 hours 9 minutes.  I was hoping to finish in less than 2 hours.  Who knows if I would have had the swim buoys stayed in place?