A couple of weeks ago I participated in the Avia Wildflower Olympic Distance Triathlon. With a finishing time of 3:05.11, I felt, well, OK after the race, considering I had thrown up once, I couldn't really feel the front of my legs, and I was suffering from minor heat stroke... But, I am a finisher and thats how I roll (Get it? Roll? As in on a bike?)
Here I am coming out of the water. The race was on Lake San Antonio, about five hours north of Los Angeles by Paso Robles. The lake was really nice at something like 68 degrees, it was slightly windy which caused for some chop in the water, but overall the conditions were nice. The USAT regulations for wetsuits says that competitors can wear wetsuits if the water temperature is 78 degrees or lower, and that if the water temp is 84 or above, wetsuits are not permitted (good Lord... swimming in 84 degree water? its like swimming in a bathtub. Gross I hate swimming in water that warm...).
So I'm coming out of the water, and you'll notice I'm on a boat ramp. The ramp is about 200 feet long, and is a fairly steep incline up to the transition area, where you go to get into your bike gear, and later, your running gear. So here I come, chugging up this great big hill, (my heart, mind, is still pounding - you're basically sprinting for the first 5 minutes of the swim to jockey for position, and then the rest you're trying to catch your breath from overexerting yourself while at the same time trying to keep up with the other swimmers around you. Even typing about it is raising my heart rate.) when my stomach basically flips over itself. I needed to find a trash can and immediately, cause that pre-workout drink that I love (its amazing, truly. I use it both when weight training and when doing endurance training... it really helps to get the mind over itself.) just wasn't doing it for me. I dash off to look, thinking to myself, "Deep breaths Chris, deep breaths. You don't want to make a fool out of yourself in front of so many people," and I ran back out of transition to where the porta-potties were, and, you know, the story goes on from there...
Yay go the bike. I had been focusing a lot of my energy on the bike for this race. I'm not the best cyclist, and when I signed up knowing that it was all hills, I realized I needed to focus my energy on my weakest event instead of my strongest (swimming). Surprisingly (I mean I shouldn't have been surprised in hindsight, but I'm telling this from a different tense and that just screws up my story) I felt the strongest on the bike. It was a really fun course, an out-and-back 40k ride over rolling hills that was pretty fast on the downhills and really tough on the uphills. The majority of the other participants who were riding alongside/with/in front of me were cordial, more or less. Those who I passed were less, those who passed me were more... And I got to chat off-and-on with some random dude who I kept playing the bicycle version of leap frog with.
The run was ridiculous. I don't even want to show pictures of what I looked like on the run, but you can see me at the finish line in this picture looking like I had just gotten backhand slapped by a bearded lady holding an ice cream cone and a piece of pizza. For 8 full kilometers of the 10k run, the course is a steady incline of over 200 feet, and its basically on a ridge overlooking the lake so there is no air flow, the sun isn't blocked out by any cloud cover (no, thats not California's style...), and its just HOT. As it were, it also turned out to be a bad hair day (remind me next year that I need to shave my head before this race...)
But I finished. And now I'm done with this post. :)
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