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?
