Trek Women's Triathlon Race Report and Assorted Musings

My first triathlon, ever, was the Danskin Women’s Triathlon at Walt Disney World, in May of 2003. I was absolutely terrified.

When my feet stopped touching the bottom of Bay Lake, and I was suddenly swimming under my own power, I panicked. I couldn’t breathe. The fumes from the motor boats standing by were overwhelming me. I flailed around and turned back and started heading back to shore. But I turned around again, caught my breath and swam on.

The medal from that race reads “the woman who starts the race is not the same one who finishes the race.” I totally agree with that. When the announcer called out my name at that race, congratulating me, and saying the words “you are a triathlete!”—that memory is even more precious to me than Mike Reilly calling out “you are an Ironman!”

Wow. I wasn’t just a runner anymore. Do you see that word, ‘-athlete’-- in the word ‘triathlete’? I was an athlete. I never thought that I’d consider be one, but here I am today.

Not only athlete, but triathlete. And now, not only triathlete, but Ironman.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a women’s-only triathlon: a few years ago, before I became an Ironman for the second time.

The last women’s-only race I did, the Danskin Women’s Triathlon in 2005, was a super huge big deal for me. I was lucky to be racing at all at that point, in the midst of divorce drama. I had to jump through hoops just to get to the start line at that race. I tore it up that year, too—I was a serious bad-ass.

“How do you like me now?” I thought to myself back then. “Two years ago I thought that I was about to drown in Bay Lake— now, I’m flying out of the water and onto the aerobars, whizzing through the turns in the back lot of the Magic Kingdom, nearly puking as I hit the finish line after the run (that’s when you know you’ve had a real good run)”.



I wasn’t feeling like such a bad-ass at the Trek Women’s Triathlon a few weeks ago. I had plantar fasciitis. I had a sprained ankle from a motor scooter crash; my leg was still scabbed over, and now I’d developed a fear of two-wheeled things. I was fighting a pretty significant weight gain, secondary to the conditions described above.

And I was scared. Scared? Me, a two-time Ironman, afraid to race an all-women’s sprint triathlon? At Walt Disney World, of all places? How much more benign could it be?

My training has been nowhere near what it used to be, and my races have been few and far between. So I began to imagine all kinds of horrific race-day scenarios.

Would I get too tired on the swim, and have to backstroke to catch my breath (this would be almost too embarrassing for words to describe for me)? Would I bust my ankle running to transition? Would I clip in wrong on my bike-- and crash-- or touch wheels with someone--and crash--or take a corner too sharp--and crash? Would my left leg finally give out and refuse to support my excess body weight and cause me to collapse in a heap in the middle of the run course?

So there I was, with a very nervous stomach, standing on the shore of the lake shortly before the race start. I felt dumpy in my Ironman tri suit. I felt like I didn’t deserve that pink m-dot tattoo on my right shoulder.

And then I was in the chute with the rest of the purple caps. And there was Sally Edwards, always my heroine, giving us our Magic Words: “I am a gorgeous swimmer”. We repeated it, with the accompanying swimming motions: “I (stroke) am (stroke) a (stroke) gorgeous (stroke) swimmer!” (Husband says that a girl came running out of transition with her bike, proclaiming “I am sexy!” I can guess what her magic phrase was….) Lib and her friend practiced this for the rest of the weekend in the Fort Wilderness swimming pool: “All together now: ‘I (stroke) am (stroke) a (stroke) gorgeous (stroke) swimmer!’”

The Magic Words did the trick. I relaxed, and high-fived Sally, as I had seven (wow, seven) seasons ago, and hit the lake.

Bay Lake was beautiful, as Disney lakes always are. The water was a translucent green, and warm. It even tasted good, when you end up with a mouthful full of it from the girl flailing around and trying to breaststroke next to you.

It started to get fun for me again. I decided that I wanted to simply finish the race today, the same as my goal seven seasons ago.



My favorite part of all-women’s triathlons is the swim. No one swims over you; you don’t get your goggles knocked off, or get a foot upside your head. What you do get is a woman who bumps into you, stops swimming, and says “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do that! Are you ok?” Your reply: “Yes, thank you very much. I’m fine. Are you all right? Go on ahead of me, ok?”

The swim is usually the scariest part of the race for newbies. For a ‘seasoned veteran’ (I use the term loosely) like me, it’s the damned bike leg. Especially in a race full of newbies, like this one, the bike leg is hairy (even if our legs are not).

You call out “on your left!”, and that’s immediately the direction that they aim their bike. They ride two abreast; three abreast. They ride on the left. They block. They swerve. You name it. Add to it the usual treacherous segments of every Disney triathlon—the back lots, heading out into the open road—and I always have visions of potential disaster.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t so bad this year. I found only one pair of women riding side-by-side—which I (not so) gently attempted to remedy.

I made it back in without incident, always grateful to have my feet on solid ground (if you know me at all, that is my triathlon philosophy: just get your feet moving back on solid ground, not kicking them or peddling them, and you’re home free).

My run was a combination hobble-hop-jog affair, but it sort of resembled a run. I surprised myself. I understood the fact that this would lead to some pretty severe pain within the next few hours—but I was running, by God.

My cheering throng of supporters (all three of them) was waiting for me at the corner of the finisher’s chute. The announcer got my name wrong, which happens approximately 93% of the time when I cross the finish line. The finisher’s medal, this year, was a silver-plated chain and tag, which also doubled as a really nice piece of jewelry (smart race directors), and which I wore with pretty much everything the rest of the weekend.

I didn’t pay much attention to my finishing time-- I finished around the middle of the pack. My swim time was… what my swim time always is, and always will be. My bike time was lousy, which I attribute to being a chicken-shit on my tri-bike, and taking the corners too slowly (I hadn’t ridden the Cannondale in a while, and forgot that tri-bikes are meant to go in a straight line). My run time really wasn’t too bad, considering everything.

(All right. I will admit it. You caught me. I told you that I didn’t care much about my finishing time and my splits, but I was really checking them on my BlackBerry a couple of hours later, on the ferry boat, on the way to lunch. Come on- I am a triathlete, after all.)


It’s good to be at races like these, these women’s triathlons full of novice triathletes. When you see the final finishers limp in, but still beaming from ear to ear, you remember why you do this in the first place: triathlon is fun. Triathlon demonstrates to those nervous and insecure women that they really are more capable than they believe themselves to be. Triathlons like these remind us ‘seasoned veterans’ how far we’ve come, and how much farther we can still go.

And women’s triathlons like these help me to remember that I still am “gorgeous” and “sexy”, even though I think that everyone is watching the cellulite jiggle on my thighs, and snickering that my butt looks really big in all of that Lycra.

Lycra does make your butt look big.

So what?

Lycra’s comfortable. It dries really fast, so you don’t get on your bike dripping wet after you come out of the water after not actually drowning, like you knew that you were going to do when you thought about it before the race.

And Lycra goes really well with that shiny new triathlon finisher’s medal that you’re wearing around your neck, and those race numbers on the back of your calf that you are going to “accidentally” forget to wash off until after you stride into work on Monday in your skirt and high heels.