Olympic Distance What? Part One.
At mile three I started to whimper. Had I had any fluids in me the whimper would’ve been a full-blown cry, but since I was totally depleted of all healthy levels of salty matter, it was just a dry whimper. I was muttering something about, “It’s supposed to be swim, bike, run, not swim, bike, WALK,” and then groaning and shuffling to rest in the next available shady spot.
Back in January my girlfriends and I got together for an annual rite of wine-fueled predictions about what the year would hold. When we got to Megan’s house with wine and tape recorder in tow, Kristen made a big hoo-ha about something we all had to promise to do together. She made us promise before the big reveal, which was an ill-advised move. “We’re going to train to do a triathlon for the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society!”
That crazy moment led to the one a few weeks later when, wine-fueled again, we settled into an auditorium in Seattle and listened to the many compelling reasons why we should enlist in an ambitious program with a bunch of other gluttons in the name of fundraising. Six workouts a week for five months. Three thousand dollars. An Olympic-distance triathlon at the end of it all. I don’t know that I even really knew what a triathlon was at that point. Just something impossible and oddly enticing. We looked at each other, collectively gulped, and signed up.
A week or so later I convinced patient Steve to join me as I kicked off this new, exhausting commitment. He wasn’t thrilled to have yet another project occupying all of my time, but as he always is in these frequent moments, he stood by me with encouragement. I roped him in. He was totally not into the pep rally vibe at the kickoff party, and grumbled a bunch about how much he would hate the whole group scene, yadda yadda, but somehow he signed up. I remember thinking that he would either hate the whole thing and quit or end up as a leader of the program – he’s like that. Like me in so many ways.
Now the triathlon is history and I can’t believe what we’ve done. It’s pretty incredible. On Sunday Kristen, Megan, Steve and I joined our teammates and hundreds of other people for a few grueling hours of excessive activity. We swam .9 miles in open water, then peeled off our wetsuits to reveal a soggy biking outfit, which got us through a 28-mile mountain ride, and then changed into running shoes for a 6.2-mile run. Hell-fucking-o! Pardon my francais, but I’m sure you can understand…
So, the scoop: triathlons are scary. Even under the guidance of a professional coach (who I LOVE) and in the company of 50 teammates of various skill levels, my nerves were a sick jumble for the week leading up to the tri. Imagine the anticipation of 100 Christmases coupled with election night nerves in the Bush era, and a dash of what people jumping out of planes for fun might experience, and you will begin to understand what my innards were feeling. We all felt that way, to some extent, as was evidenced by the frequent flushing of toilets in our shared triathlon-weekend condo. Oh, and that leads to the other scoop: when training for a physical endurance event, normally embarrassing or unpalatable bodily functions become the stuff of totally necessary conversations with near strangers – it’s all science and shared experience, right? Say, for instance, that I need to know whether it is normal to feel the need to void all fluids through all orifices during a race. I’m not saying I went through that, of course, but say, for the sake of argument, that I did. If I went through that I would ask my fellow teammates about it and learn that it’s something that a lot of people experience when doing endurance events, and then I would hear ways to deal with such a (fictional) problem.
But I digress.
They (you know, the ever-present They) say that the training is the bulk of the experience. “It’s the training, not the event.” I’m starting to come around to that notion now. I also now fully believe that the triathlon experience is as much about mental stamina and strength as anything physical. My biggest challenge in the last six months was motivating for my training, and then coping with the nagging negative thinking that would vex me during my workouts. My brain wanted to believe I wasn’t capable of doing what I needed to do, and my brain has always been my most, uh, formidable muscle. This was, for me, the greatest tie to the fundraising cause: the people I was raising money for were in races for their lives, and I was dealing with confidence demons. Pathetic and real.
Sunday morning came after many months of thinking it never would. I naturally awakened at 6, which is wholly unnatural for me. After many night-before hours of fretting over our triathlon gear, Kristen, Megan, Steve and I piled into the car and headed to the drop-off location. Let me go off on a tangent for a moment: Triathletes require a lot of stuff. Our checklist of stuff occupies two columns of a sheet of 8 ½” x 11” paper, and one oversight can mean serious discomfort, inconvenience, or worse, inability to compete. Let’s review: swim. Swimming in open water in the lovely Northwest requires a wetsuit (check), a swim cap (check), goggles for sun or low light conditions with no-fog drops (check), and Body Glide, a deodorant-like stick of Crisco-like crap which allegedly makes things easier to get on, off, and not to chafe. Bike. This requires: biking shorts to be worn under the wetsuit (check), a top (check), socks (check), clipless shoes (check), sunscreen (check), a helmet (check), sunglasses (check), padded gloves (check), and food and drink (check and check). Oh! And a bike! (CHECK.) Run. For the run you need shoes (check) and a hat (check). The way the tri works is thus: swim and then go to your already-established area (Transition One) to transform from a swimmer to a rider. Ride, and then revisit the area for your transformation to a runner (Transition Two). Finish, and then put your crap away. The area each triathlete gets for transition is the size of a bath towel folded into fourths. So, not so much space.
Where was I? Oh yeah – we packed all of the above, and were shuffled off to the bus pickup area. This, apparently, is unique in the world of triathlons. The Pacific Crest tri in Bend starts at a reservoir and then leads into a town. The athletes are bused to the swim location and then ride back. We all boarded our bus with nerves on red alert. Some people goofed off (us) and others completely went silent (also us) as the :30 ride went on. Kristen and Megan and I spent the ride dissolving into junior high-like giggles, as they sang a rousing medley of Bobby McFerrin-meets-Sound-of-Music numbers. Totally painful and perfect. The bus belched us all out into the transition one area and we went about prepping for the start. When we delivered our bikes the day before there were only a few scattered around the area. When we arrived the morning of the race I was struck by how many people and bikes there were, and how amazingly cool the whole thing was. There was an energy in the air which can’t really adequately be described – just visceral. I pulled on my wetsuit and decided to hop in the water to warm up. When you get into open water in a wetsuit you immediately sense that the water isn’t nearly as cold as you predicted. You wade in further, faster, and then the water seeps into the suit along the sides of the zipper on the back and the freezing trickle makes every cell retreat. Nothing feels quite like it, at once terrible and oddly fun. I did a few strokes and felt strong. All of my muscles wanted to be there, and my form felt solid, good. I climbed out of the water, into the sea of other wetsuit-clad triathletes, and waited. Steve found me and pointed out his dad and stepmom over on the sidelines holding “Go Steve! Go Kerry” signs. I squealed with delight, inside and out. Kristen’s husband and Megan’s boyfriend were there, too, with camera in hand. When I saw the pics later I laughed – those of us awaiting the signal looked like brightly-capped seals, in our swimcaps and black wetsuits. I’m embarrassed to write the following sentence, but will someday regret not being totally honest if I don’t. I felt cool. For the first time in ages. I was proud to be there, among the others, in my weird uniform getting ready to do something extreme. Oh man, I wish I could bottle that feeling. I really do.
They counted down from five over the loudspeaker, and the hundred other orange-capped and I got in the water and started to swim. Maybe I should back up: triathlons are started in age-specific waves – if you’re between 30 and 34, for instance, you’ll be given a bright orange swim cap, and you’ll start the race in the first wave, at 9 am. The next wave goes 5 minutes later, and is identified by another color of cap. And so on. Oh, and the course is marked by large buoys – these looked very far – everyone was chattering about whether a mile really looked that far. I was orange, and in wave one. The horn sounded and I started to swim, and then the panic set in.
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT!
Back in January my girlfriends and I got together for an annual rite of wine-fueled predictions about what the year would hold. When we got to Megan’s house with wine and tape recorder in tow, Kristen made a big hoo-ha about something we all had to promise to do together. She made us promise before the big reveal, which was an ill-advised move. “We’re going to train to do a triathlon for the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society!”
That crazy moment led to the one a few weeks later when, wine-fueled again, we settled into an auditorium in Seattle and listened to the many compelling reasons why we should enlist in an ambitious program with a bunch of other gluttons in the name of fundraising. Six workouts a week for five months. Three thousand dollars. An Olympic-distance triathlon at the end of it all. I don’t know that I even really knew what a triathlon was at that point. Just something impossible and oddly enticing. We looked at each other, collectively gulped, and signed up.
A week or so later I convinced patient Steve to join me as I kicked off this new, exhausting commitment. He wasn’t thrilled to have yet another project occupying all of my time, but as he always is in these frequent moments, he stood by me with encouragement. I roped him in. He was totally not into the pep rally vibe at the kickoff party, and grumbled a bunch about how much he would hate the whole group scene, yadda yadda, but somehow he signed up. I remember thinking that he would either hate the whole thing and quit or end up as a leader of the program – he’s like that. Like me in so many ways.
Now the triathlon is history and I can’t believe what we’ve done. It’s pretty incredible. On Sunday Kristen, Megan, Steve and I joined our teammates and hundreds of other people for a few grueling hours of excessive activity. We swam .9 miles in open water, then peeled off our wetsuits to reveal a soggy biking outfit, which got us through a 28-mile mountain ride, and then changed into running shoes for a 6.2-mile run. Hell-fucking-o! Pardon my francais, but I’m sure you can understand…
So, the scoop: triathlons are scary. Even under the guidance of a professional coach (who I LOVE) and in the company of 50 teammates of various skill levels, my nerves were a sick jumble for the week leading up to the tri. Imagine the anticipation of 100 Christmases coupled with election night nerves in the Bush era, and a dash of what people jumping out of planes for fun might experience, and you will begin to understand what my innards were feeling. We all felt that way, to some extent, as was evidenced by the frequent flushing of toilets in our shared triathlon-weekend condo. Oh, and that leads to the other scoop: when training for a physical endurance event, normally embarrassing or unpalatable bodily functions become the stuff of totally necessary conversations with near strangers – it’s all science and shared experience, right? Say, for instance, that I need to know whether it is normal to feel the need to void all fluids through all orifices during a race. I’m not saying I went through that, of course, but say, for the sake of argument, that I did. If I went through that I would ask my fellow teammates about it and learn that it’s something that a lot of people experience when doing endurance events, and then I would hear ways to deal with such a (fictional) problem.
But I digress.
They (you know, the ever-present They) say that the training is the bulk of the experience. “It’s the training, not the event.” I’m starting to come around to that notion now. I also now fully believe that the triathlon experience is as much about mental stamina and strength as anything physical. My biggest challenge in the last six months was motivating for my training, and then coping with the nagging negative thinking that would vex me during my workouts. My brain wanted to believe I wasn’t capable of doing what I needed to do, and my brain has always been my most, uh, formidable muscle. This was, for me, the greatest tie to the fundraising cause: the people I was raising money for were in races for their lives, and I was dealing with confidence demons. Pathetic and real.
Sunday morning came after many months of thinking it never would. I naturally awakened at 6, which is wholly unnatural for me. After many night-before hours of fretting over our triathlon gear, Kristen, Megan, Steve and I piled into the car and headed to the drop-off location. Let me go off on a tangent for a moment: Triathletes require a lot of stuff. Our checklist of stuff occupies two columns of a sheet of 8 ½” x 11” paper, and one oversight can mean serious discomfort, inconvenience, or worse, inability to compete. Let’s review: swim. Swimming in open water in the lovely Northwest requires a wetsuit (check), a swim cap (check), goggles for sun or low light conditions with no-fog drops (check), and Body Glide, a deodorant-like stick of Crisco-like crap which allegedly makes things easier to get on, off, and not to chafe. Bike. This requires: biking shorts to be worn under the wetsuit (check), a top (check), socks (check), clipless shoes (check), sunscreen (check), a helmet (check), sunglasses (check), padded gloves (check), and food and drink (check and check). Oh! And a bike! (CHECK.) Run. For the run you need shoes (check) and a hat (check). The way the tri works is thus: swim and then go to your already-established area (Transition One) to transform from a swimmer to a rider. Ride, and then revisit the area for your transformation to a runner (Transition Two). Finish, and then put your crap away. The area each triathlete gets for transition is the size of a bath towel folded into fourths. So, not so much space.
Where was I? Oh yeah – we packed all of the above, and were shuffled off to the bus pickup area. This, apparently, is unique in the world of triathlons. The Pacific Crest tri in Bend starts at a reservoir and then leads into a town. The athletes are bused to the swim location and then ride back. We all boarded our bus with nerves on red alert. Some people goofed off (us) and others completely went silent (also us) as the :30 ride went on. Kristen and Megan and I spent the ride dissolving into junior high-like giggles, as they sang a rousing medley of Bobby McFerrin-meets-Sound-of-Music numbers. Totally painful and perfect. The bus belched us all out into the transition one area and we went about prepping for the start. When we delivered our bikes the day before there were only a few scattered around the area. When we arrived the morning of the race I was struck by how many people and bikes there were, and how amazingly cool the whole thing was. There was an energy in the air which can’t really adequately be described – just visceral. I pulled on my wetsuit and decided to hop in the water to warm up. When you get into open water in a wetsuit you immediately sense that the water isn’t nearly as cold as you predicted. You wade in further, faster, and then the water seeps into the suit along the sides of the zipper on the back and the freezing trickle makes every cell retreat. Nothing feels quite like it, at once terrible and oddly fun. I did a few strokes and felt strong. All of my muscles wanted to be there, and my form felt solid, good. I climbed out of the water, into the sea of other wetsuit-clad triathletes, and waited. Steve found me and pointed out his dad and stepmom over on the sidelines holding “Go Steve! Go Kerry” signs. I squealed with delight, inside and out. Kristen’s husband and Megan’s boyfriend were there, too, with camera in hand. When I saw the pics later I laughed – those of us awaiting the signal looked like brightly-capped seals, in our swimcaps and black wetsuits. I’m embarrassed to write the following sentence, but will someday regret not being totally honest if I don’t. I felt cool. For the first time in ages. I was proud to be there, among the others, in my weird uniform getting ready to do something extreme. Oh man, I wish I could bottle that feeling. I really do.
They counted down from five over the loudspeaker, and the hundred other orange-capped and I got in the water and started to swim. Maybe I should back up: triathlons are started in age-specific waves – if you’re between 30 and 34, for instance, you’ll be given a bright orange swim cap, and you’ll start the race in the first wave, at 9 am. The next wave goes 5 minutes later, and is identified by another color of cap. And so on. Oh, and the course is marked by large buoys – these looked very far – everyone was chattering about whether a mile really looked that far. I was orange, and in wave one. The horn sounded and I started to swim, and then the panic set in.
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT!
posted by O'Mc Bloggivan at 11:36 PM
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