I did it. I finished a triathlon on Saturday, and I didn’t come in last, which were my initial two goals. I am someone who, six months ago when I signed up, couldn’t even run a mile, got winded after a few laps in the pool and had just decent bike skills, so this was quite an accomplishment for me.
As the event drew nearer and I gained confidence that I could finish the triathlon, I set another goal, and that was to finish in less than 2 hours, which would put me somewhere in the middle of my age group. I finished with a time of 2 hours and 6 minutes, but I didn’t feel too bad about this, for reasons I’ll explain later.
Although I had tried to prepare for everything, there were two big surprises. First, was how difficult the swim was. I had put in the laps, practiced a little bit in open water and read all about the hazards and techniques for open water swim. I wasn’t afraid of fish, seaweed or lack of cement walls. But nothing prepared me for the real thing, and it was crazy hard. Silly me, I only learned to breathe on one side, the left, and the directional bouys were on the right. Since I had to constantly site the bouys to stay on track, this really threw me off. Also, the choppy waves were coming from the left. It turned out to be a half-mile flail rather than a half-mile swim.
My backup plan was to flip on my back to catch my breath if I needed to rest and regroup. It worked well in the pool, but in the open water, a backstroke is not the best idea if you don’t want to swim off course and whack everyone in the vicinity. Also, with the water moving around so much, I actually felt dizzy and nauseated on my back. Seasick during a swim? Lesson learned. So, I didn’t get a great time on the swim, but I was glad just to have finished that segment, and to finish still with my age group, albeit at the tail end.
I was so glad to be out of the water and onto the bike, because no matter how hard it was, at least I wasn’t going to drown. I felt great the first half of the ride, and even passed quite a few people. I decided I should go much faster on the second half to gain some time to make up for the swim and what was going to be a slow run time. But the last half of the bike segment, my strongest event, was into a stiff headwind. Normally, I can sustain 19 to 20 miles per hour, but in the wind, I was reduced to about 14 to 15 miles per hour pedaling as hard as I could. So most of the minutes I lost were due to uncontrollable conditions.
The run segment was the second big surprise. I figured this was going to be by far my weakest segment, because I am a slow runner and usually can’t finish the three miles without walking at least a little bit. And after a swim and a bike, I just wasn’t sure. But I ran the whole way, with a few brief minutes of walking on the steepest uphills when my shin splints were screaming. It was a suffer-fest at the beginning, but the last half was actually less so than the first half.
When I’ve read about people finishing their first triathlons or marathons or other endurance events, it’s common for them to burst into tears at the end. I felt some of this coming up to the finish line with people applauding and cheering the finishers on. I got a grip and then analyzed why I felt like crying. I finished something I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do. And I could stop running now.