Wednesday, September 23, 2009

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.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

A Reverie of Sorts

Sandwiched between the usual Sunday “what are we going to eat for dinner” and “where did I leave my cell phone this time” and “what are you planning to wear for school tomorrow”, a small slice of serenity.

The afternoon was supposed to entail a 24 mile bike ride, a short kayak jaunt on the lake and a bucket or two of balls on the driving range. Peace and contemplation did not seem to fit anywhere into this plan, but it was going to be fun.

Unfortunately, although I had brought beautiful Ruby Opal to ride, I had forgotten the helmet, gloves and shoes necessary to ride her. I banged my palm on the side of the truck in frustration. This was the second time I managed to leave the house half-assed in about as many weeks. For all of my bitching and moaning about the pain in my calf and my fatigue, I was really looking forward to the ride. Another Sunday ride shot, and my butt getting bigger and bigger in my bike shorts.

“Change of plans,” Allen decided after we parked over by the lake. “We paddle around. We go hit golf balls. It’s stupid to drive all the way back to Waresboro for your stuff.” A somewhat surprising declaration, considering that Allen is most definitely In Training for the end-of-season races, and really needed to get some miles in.

When we put the kayaks in the water, there were still a few speedboats and Jet Skis flying back and forth across the “lake”, really just a dammed up creek which was transformed into a long, skinny pond with iced-tea water. It’s really just fine: room for boating and fishing and paddling and birding.

Lib and I took our turns first. We hadn’t been out on them for a few months, and it was evident. We spun in circles and whacked into each other a few times, and paddled a little ways down and back by the shore.

Libby had enough adventure for one afternoon, and retired to the picnic tables to sit and reflect, Libby-style, by texting her best friend for the next hour.

By now, the sun was moving down toward the end of the lake, and the power people had departed for the afternoon. Allen and I ventured to the other shore. I wondered what the end of the lake looked like, because I’d never seen it, so we paddled down the middle of the lake toward the far shore.

This is the kind of kayaking I like- the quiet kind. These particular kayaks are not well-suited for whitewater or anything aggressive like that, so usually we paddle out past the waves in the ocean, or down the quiet part of the Chattahoochee River, or in this lake.

There’s no noise coming from the shore; the only sound is the small splish of the paddles a they hit the water. It’s quiet enough that, even with Allen twenty feet ahead of me, we can still carry on a conversation.

We paddled past the giant land yachts and the CCC-built cabins at the campground, over to the grassy border of the bird sanctuary. Sure enough, there was a flock of egrets heading that way, with one stray bird following behind. We surmised that this must be the Whiny Nerdy Bird: “Come on, guys, wait up! Geez….”

We somewhat reluctantly headed back to shore, not wanting the reverie to end, but not wanting to miss Sunday Whack-A-Ball over at the golf range. If we didn’t get back there soon, we would be playing what we affectionately call Sonar Golf— we can’t see where the ball is going, but we know it’s a good one by the sound it makes leaving the head of the club, and how long it takes to hear it plop down range.

We had brought a watermelon to the lake, a home grown one that is a source of great pride for me. I’ve never been able to grow more than a handful of tomatoes and two cucumbers in my life, but I had six of these beauties this year. Allen chopped off big hunks for all of us for a quick fix before golf.

We sat by the edge of the lake, our feet almost in the water, and dripped watermelon juice down our arms. Allen and I spit the seeds into the lake; Libby carefully picked hers out of her piece because she claimed that she was unable to spit watermelon seeds with any accuracy, and was embarrassed.

As I am prone to reflection at times like these, I pondered the origin of the watermelon. Who thought of eating these things? Where did they come from? We contemplated the possibility of finding wild watermelons somewhere—somehow, this didn’t seem a likely scenario.

We were covered in sticky watermelon juice—Allen dunked his entire self into the lake to get rid of it. We packed up the rest of the watermelon, as well as the rind—I intend to make watermelon pickles for my next adventure in canning—and headed over to the golf course, We indeed ended up playing Sonar Golf, which is actually much more fun for lousy golfers like us.

I realize that my butt will be too big to fit on the saddle if I don’t get back on the bike soon, since running is out for the moment. Kayaking is not much of an aerobic workout, even though, of course, we tried to make it one. The afternoon was a spiritual workout, really—training to quiet the mind and put aside the busyness of life. Watching the dark water pass by, and getting yourself sticky with home-grown melons on a late summer afternoon.

Friday, September 4, 2009

The Wednesday Ride

I've recently joined an online writing site, Writers Village . I've taken some good courses, both peer-reviewed and facilitated. I did one recently based on the book by Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way. One of this month's classes is "Writing the Memoir", based on Your Life as Story by Tristine Rainer. Since I love personal essay (like, duh, because most of what I post here is just that), I hope to get some good stuff out of it.

I thought I'd share my homework for this week-- nothing profound, just a few thoughts about The Wednesday Ride:


Allen and I ride bikes every Wednesday, after work. “After work” is a loosely applied term, which means “we hope to get out there and get some miles in before the road turns completely black in front of us because we never bring our headlights and the only light we get is the light that shines on our backs as the headlights run up behind us.”

The usual Wednesday ride take-off point has been at the intersection of US-1 and Swamp Park Road, parking in the grass beside the road in front of the train tracks. Sometimes, when we’re setting up our bikes, a freight train comes by, and we have to plug our ears with our fingers to muffle the deafening horn.

This parking area is where the Crazies hang out before and after the ride: a group of guys, cyclists, who spend an hour in a pace line at speeds in excess of 23 miles per hour, attempting to shake each other off the tail of the group. They stand around in the parking area in their flip-flops and spandex after the ride, swilling Gatorade and ribbing each other about their prowess, or lack thereof, in cycling—and elsewhere.

We don’t hang out much there lately. As much as I enjoy the trash-talk and machismo, I have never really been able to keep up with those guys, so I end up riding alone. It’s getting hard for Allen, too—and he’s finally reached the point where he doesn’t want to keep up with them—it just hurts too much.

So we park at the State Park down the road, which has actual bathrooms and a real parking lot. We get there in the evening, and the pavilions and playground that surround the lake are deserted. It’s quiet, and we have the whole park to ourselves.

We have our Wednesday Ride ritual: we pull the bikes off the rack on the tailgate of the truck, and complain about how much our bike rack sucks. We air the tires on our sleek carbon road bikes, the tires making a quick “pop” when you pull the pump from the tire valves. I pad around in my socks, trying to avoid the rocks in the parking lot, as I collect my (very smelly) bike shoes, glasses, and helmet with my (also very smelly)gloves tucked inside. I put my shoes on next-- I love the sound the hard cleats make when they strike the pavement. I check my water bottles, bike computer, and the tires one more time. I buckle my helmet and slide on my gloves, and then hop into the saddle.

If you’re not a roadie, you probably don’t know about clipless pedals, bike pedals which attach to the soles of your bike shoes, this rendering you one with the machine. I do not particularly like to be rendered one with the machine, because I hate to fall over like a bug when I can’t unclip my shoes fast enough, but they do allow you to ride strong and fast. So-‘click’- we’re clipped in and on our way.

The Wednesday Ride must follow this exact route: it’s the law. We must take a right out of the park and onto the road. We wind past the lake and over the dam, past the bass fishermen, up the hill and around the Camp for the Blind. We coast down the small hill to the golf course—if I’m very lucky, we stop in to the pro shop and pick up some tokens so we can hit a bucket of balls at the driving range later.

Then the ride begins in earnest. By now, the afternoon has started to cool off, and we speed up, past the pine trees on either side of the road. The Wednesday Ride always smells like pine trees.

Then we get to the hairy part of the ride: crossing the four lanes of US 1, with its fast-moving tractor trailers barreling towards the interstate a few miles away. I shift down to the little gear so I can stop if I have to. Allen rides circles at the side of the road while he waits for the trucks to pass—I think he’s nuts, and I worry about him falling into the road. I breathe a sign of relief when we’re across the highway, across the train tracks, and onto Swamp Park Road.

Swamp Park Road is named, appropriately enough, after Swamp Park, the little Okefenokee tourist attraction, with its boat tours of the swamp, and its abundance of alligators. We love Swamp Park Road because it’s devoid of cars, flat, and fast. If you are so inclined, you can haul butt, rocket to the entrance of the park, spin around, and rocket back- unless, of course, there’s a head wind.

But, sometimes, we don’t rocket through the place. The Big Fire, which burned in the Okefenokee Swamp a few years ago, and nearly took the town with it, burned the pine trees down. The smoking trees were horrible, but what grew in their place is strangely beautiful. You can see for miles—nothing to impede your view but grass and bushes and the occasional lone Georgia Pine. So we stop, and just look, and are thankful we’re in the Okefenokee Swamp on a Wednesday evening, and watch the blue herons and the red-tailed hawks.

By now, the sun is starting to get very low on the horizon, and I am beginning to get nervous, because I hate riding in the dark. So we pick up the pace, dodging the odd snake crossing the road.

We work together now, intent, and silent. I draft off Allen so I can ride faster, and therefore get back to the truck faster. We spin past the park entrance, down to US 82—the route that must be followed; it’s the law, remember—and then swing back.

Now it is most definitely getting dark, and I am cursing under my breath and swearing that this is the LAST time I will ride this late—EVER—and I can’t believe how stupid this is and try to see the road using the last of the light coming from between the trees.

Finally—we coast back into the parking lot, and do our ritual in reverse. Helmet off, gloves off… but this time, it’s in the dark, and I sometimes can’t see my hands in front of my eyes.

And then we’re finally in the truck, cruising down those same roads that we just biked on, headlights on, back into town, to the Wal-Mart, to the house, to dinner, onto the couch, and then into bed, very tired.

We’ll be back again the next Wednesday, and I will have still forgotten the headlights. So we’ll ride until it’s dark, through the summer and into the fall, until the darkness falls so early that we won’t even have time to get the bikes off the rack before we won’t be able to see. We’ll wait out the winter, and when it’s finally light enough after work, we’ll be back for our ritual Wednesday Night Ride. And my riding will be slower and more tentative after the winter, I am sure, but the road and the Swamp will still be there for us.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

More and Harder?

Awesome article in the Wall Street Journal today. The article focused mainly on over-50 athletes who struggle to balance their competitiveness and the effects of aging on the body. That need to stay competitive often times leads to overtraining, which leads to increased stress on the body and injury—and I would add that it becomes a vicious circle after a while. Your performance declines as you age; you train as hard as you can to try to fight the decline; you over train and get sick and injured; you train even harder, until you end up a burnt-out mess.

Lots of other good stuff in the article, and a plug for Mark Allen and Brant Secunda’s book, Fit Soul, Fit Body. I’d like to read that.

I have not reached the aforementioned milestone age quite yet, but the article did get me thinking about my own fitness life. This one comment caught my attention in particular:

“A study published last year in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine reinforced other recent research showing that intensity tends to diminish the view of physical activity as pleasant.”

I suppose that it’s a no-brainer: suffering sucks. It hurts. It’s no fun.

It really hit home for me the other day, out for a quick 24 mile ride in the late afternoon. I always seem to be in training for something or another; therefore, I need to push it, to work, to get that lactate threshold up. It was beautiful out in the park- the sun was beginning to set, the air was cooling- and I was in freaking high Zone 3.

I realized that it was getting old, fast—the sufferfest that triathlon training often is. I wanted to slow down, to enjoy the air, to enjoy the feeling of my body in motion. I just wanted the ride to not suck.

I’ve been a triathlete for a number of years now. I have wanted to train hard, to set high goals for myself, to PR, to finish another Ironman, to score an age-group award. But the overuse injuries have begun to creep in, namely, a really bad case of plantar fasciitis. I get really tired of hurting during workouts.

And I think that the hurting leads to burnout. The “view of physical activity as pleasant” is very much diminished.

Here’s my confession: the burnout is beginning in my own life. It’s my own vicious circle: I have a burning need to be competitive. I am not a natural athlete. I have to work my butt off to be competitive. I get injured because I work my butt off. Training starts to suck. I have to back off. It gets even harder to be competitive, because now I’ve gained weight and lost fitness. So I have to work even harder. I get frustrated, and fatigued, and the injuries linger—and the burnout begins.

And, of course, I am a triathlete: you know, “Swim. Bike. Run. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.” This is what I know; this is what I do. Without that structure in my life, and in my fitness, I lose my bearings. And I end up doing a whole lot of nothing.

So there it is. I’m burning out.

But, like every obsessive Type A overachiever triathlete out there—I have a plan. I am going to actually synthesize the points in that article and embark upon a new course of action. Here it is:

1. I am going to take to heart Allen’s credo: “It’s not my day job.”
2. I am going to stop racing and training in pain, and address the overuse injuries.
3. I am going to try to be a participant for a while—not a competitor.
4. I am going to try to branch out from “swim/bike/run”—even if it’s just “swim/mountain bike/trail run.” Hey- it’s a start.
5. When it’s fun again, I will set reasonable triathlon goals for myself, and be competitive to the best of my abilities.

And I’m going to learn to have fun just moving again—belly dancing, hooping, jumping rope with the kids, hiking….

My favorite Nike running shirt says “Walking is not an option.” After careful consideration, I am going to rethink that assertion. Maybe I’ll just put on my running shoes and take a walk, and see what’s going on in the world today.