So my olympic triathlon was a bust. The training was half-arsed. I never did a complete run through. I never even completed the distance for the bike nor the run portion. I practiced at a lake just one time. So sad and very bad. But i guess it's a good thign i'm an 'eh wutever happens happens' kinda gal. I don't care for time and i don't care if i look like a complete idiot. I really don't care wut other people think about me and that's both a blessing and a curse. Well, not really a curse but it really isn't always such a good thing. Even though it had been a scorcher for most of semptember, the race just happened to fall on a slight cool front. I was shivering while waiting for my turn to jump into the lake. For inquiring minds and well wishers, i drafted a synopsis of my race and this is what they got:
The weather was kinda sucky this weekend. It rained Friday and A LOT on Saturday. Therefore, the bike portion of the tri was CANCELLED. It was now deemed an ‘aquathlon’. Ugh. Seriously? This means that I will have to do this again so I know I got a real tri under my belly. In the end, I think it was a blessing in disguise. Someone out there was watching out for me because they knew that there was no way I would have been able to complete the bike portion and THEN run. I don't think I could have done it. My legs were so heavy and fatigued after the swim that I almost decided to quit right after I had just passed the 'run out' flags. Haha. Blah.
The swim:
I did not like having to tread water for FIVE minutes before getting the go. My plan was to stay in the back of the pack but instead I found myself in the middle of a sea of powder blue swim caps, which is prolly my least fave color by the way. So when it's time to start. I get thrashing arms and legs in every direction. It was chaos. I kind of doggy paddled until nearly everyone in my wave passed me up before I began to swim in my slow motion stroke. I can't seem to swim straight so I was all over the place. Plus, it was only my second time swimming in open water. I did not prepare well. I ended up being the LAST olympic swimmer to finish olympic swim course. Which meant that this guy in a kayak decided to follow me the entire time. It was a bit distracting. And because I can't swim STRAIGHT, I ended up running into the kayak twice. Or he ran into me. Or at least he could have moved out of the way! But I think he was only trying to help me stay on course instead going too far left and right. Every time I would lift my head up he would yell out 'THAT WAY! OVER THERE! Haha. There was also all this stringy plant debris stuff that I kept struggling to get off me while I was swimming. This usually happened when I swam too far to the right and got too close to the shore. I felt like throwing up half way into the swim. And then near the finish, I kept choking on all this water. The stupid sprint swimmers were creating all these waves in the water. I felt like I swimming towards and into a whirlpool.
Transition:
I took my darling time. 7+ minutes. Haha. There was .2 mile distance between the lake and transition area. UGH! I hate running! And I felt as if I were wasting energy having to RUN to transition. And my feet are super sensitive so I was like ow ow ow whenever I had to run bare foot on concrete. I was thirsty and so I decided to drink from my bike bottle. I must have squeezed a little too hard cos this hard stream of water went straight to the back of my throat and I start choking and coughing. I ate some gu. Decided to redo my pony tail. I was not taking this seriously anymore at this point. I fumbled what seemed like forever with my race belt. I think I need a bigger size. Or I guess I could always try to lose weight. Blah.
The run:
Since I was the last oly swimmer to finish. I ended up being the SECOND TO LAST person to cross the finish line. It was pretty sad. And lonely. And not at all what I imagined it to be. There was a big part of the course for only Olympics runners. I was literally by myself most of the time running the course. I took so long that the water stands were beginning to close up shop. I had to ASK if I could get some water TWICE. Haha. And then at the finish line, there were only a handful of volunteers cheering me on. A lone cowbell clanking. And my paul yelling out a few words of encouragement. Very anti-climactic. And then I find out that all the pizza and kolaches were gone. I felt like this girl here:
http://youtu.be/-oaa37C-PUQ
I finished dead last in my age group and nearly last of all the female competitors. I don't think I was ready for this. Haha. When I showered, I felt this burning sensation and there was this big gash on my boob that I hadn't noticed earlier. I assume it was from one of my overly competitive powder blue swimmers. I also got the most painful massage at the memorial hermann tent afterwards. I think I have bruises on my thighs! He gave me his card after and I was thinking to myself 'riiigghhhht'. I literally ran out of biofreeze yesterday trying to coat my entire body. I was so tired and sore that you would have thought that I didn’t train for this at all! Fortunately, I don't have an inferiority complex about coming in last place to keep me from doing this again. But! My sporting images. I look terrible. Those ugly photos of me might be enough for me to not do this again.
Girl. You are so much stronger than I am. It’s so awesome that you were able to do the WHOLE Olympic triathlon and with what I presume was a pretty good time. Do you know that I still had not run more than 4 miles prior to this event? Haha. So not prepared. Hopefully I will do better next year. Unless I have baby.
my times:
swim - 46:52.2 (3:07/M - slower than expected)
bike - X (i usually have an average of 15mph so my guess time is around 1:25:00)
run - 1:23:13 (13:25/M - just as expected)
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