1 Hour 13 Seconds

According to preliminary results - scratch that, I just checked and the official results are in... My first "super sprint" triathlon, the Ramblin Rose (which involved 400 women from ages 9 to 64) took me exactly 1 hour and 13 seconds to complete. My goal was to finish in one hour, so I guess being 13 seconds off isn't too bad. Not that too many of you will really care about the numbered details, but for my own memory and as a record for the future, here is the breakdown:

250 yd swim - 7:17 (275th place - not good!)

Transition #1 - 1:47

9 mile bike ride - 32:32 (77th place - better)

Transition #2 - 0:32

2 mile run - 18:07 (29th place - respectable)

For an overall 51st place!!! (and 5th in my age group!!!) which I am totally excited about!!! (in case you didn't pick up on the extra exclamation points).


So now for a little more of the narrative. The transition area opened for setup at 6:00am. The race director suggested people arrive between 6 and 6:30 to get set up. Since Chris decided it would be too crazy to have a vehicle trapped in the YWCA parking lot, we just rode our bikes in the dark. I can't say I was tickled with the idea of riding my bike home an additional mile and a half all UPHILL after the race was over later in the day, but it actually worked out fine.

We left the house a little after 6:00, and while Chris loves this picture because it makes it look like I was the ONLY one there, I wasn't! (I can't help it that I grew up in a family that likes to be places ON TIME... which is something I'm learning is considered impolite here in the South.)

After staking claim on my little piece of land with my towel, I got my transition area all set up. Bike hanging off the tripod with bike helmet hanging off the handlebars. Sunglasses and race belt with race number inside helmet. Running/biking shoes (same thing for me - different for some people though) on the towel with one sock in each shoe. Little plastic box with flip-close lid (also known as one of those Oil of Olay facial cleansing cloth containers - I love to reuse!) for my swim cap, goggles, and nose plugs. (That part I didn't learn at tri 101 clinic - thought of that all on my own... :) I didn't want those things to get all nasty if they got on the asphalt while I was gone.


After feeling everything was in its proper place, I went and got body marked. I'm not sure why your race number has to be in so many darn places, but they write it on both thighs and both upper arms - in permanent marker! (which actually makes a pretty cool right of passage insignia that I'm not trying too hard to scrub off). At this point, I also put on my super-cool Ramblin Rose tattoo - the only tattoo I'll ever have I'm sure...



They also write your age on the back of your right calf - which again I don't quite understand the reason behind it, but it certainly does come in handy if you're competitive and you are passing people during the bike and the run. (Top three people in each age group usually win awards - ages are typically broken down in a 20-24; 25-29; 30-34; etc. pattern). And, if you're really self-conscious about your age, a warning: they round up. It's however old you are on Dec. 31 of that year... (Here we are getting our last minute pep rally cheers from Emily, our group cheerleader. I'm in the long sleeves - of course - always cold...)



So the swim begins - even numbers make a line on one side; odds on the other, and two people start every ten seconds. I was number 169 (based on our estimated swim times when we registered), so my start time wasn't until 8:33. As you can tell, I'm not too amused at this point and just want the swim to be over with.



I fairly successfully swam a lap and a half (which was really about all I had ever been able to do well during practice), but then I choked on a bunch of water which caused this horrid burping/coughing issue that persisted throughout the rest of the 7 lengths (hey, you get ALL the details in this blog! Sorry if that disgusts you :). Everything that I had practiced so hard for the last six weeks went right out the window and I was in panic/survival mode for the rest of the way. I backstroked probably 3 of the lengths and paused at the ends probably 3 times as well. It was not at all how I wanted it to go, but I finally made it.



After climbing out of the pool, you have to run out of the YWCA into the parking lot (yes, barefeet) and find your bike. Granted, they are numbered and you were the one who put your bike on these tripods, but as you can imagine when you're coming out of the building a little discombobulated already, it's sometimes tricky remembering EXACTLY where your bike is! Luckily, I was at the starting point of the middle rack (so I wasn't all the way on the end, but I was the first one of my section of tripod) - and our row was right at a crosswalk, so there were huge white stripes right where I needed to turn - very handy! I found my bike, put on my race belt (which has your bib number snapped to it so you don't have to put pins through anything and you don't have to try to throw on a shirt over a wet body), bike helmet, sunglasses, socks, and shoes, and I was off. You have to run your bike (no riding) through the transition area until you get to the mounting line and then you can hop on and go.



I had ridden the course three times during training, so I felt pretty familiar with the route. The person right in front of me however, missed the first turn, slammed on her brakes (which created an impressive screech) and had to turn around and come back. Just as I was approaching "the big (dangerous) hill" I saw a couple turn left in front of me and then I heard what could have been a gunshot! I think her tire just popped, but it was enough to startle/distract me and I didn't get my gears shifted all the way down to my smallest ring - which totally meant I was never going to make it up the dreaded hill (so described because you have to make a sharp right turn over a little cement bridge that crosses a creek as you attempt to climb up this uneven, narrow sidewalk that has a chain link fence on one side and forest on the other.) I think I might have used a swear word as I hopped off my bike and ran it up the hill, knowing there was nothing else I could do. (Which in the end, wasn't that big of deal because I actually caught somebody who was riding up it). The rest of the ride seems pretty uneventful looking back on it. I was pretty disappointed with the swim so that gave me a little extra motivation to move it on the bike.



The first half of the run was not as good as I've done it in the past - I could tell I was not moving very swiftly at all. I was miffed because the first part of the course getting from the transition area to the road was not well marked at all. The volunteer told me to stay to the left - so I went to the left side of the blue and white flags - which as you can imagine led me right into those bushes! (I guess I didn't think three was enough - I wanted to add the fourth sport of hurdles to my competition apparently!) The course was out and back with the first mile being all uphill (towards our apartment), and then naturally, the return miles being all downhill - rejoice! Again, not completely satisfied with the communication of the layout of the course: As I was approaching the last little bit before I turned to head for the finish line, I did one of those awkward you-go-that-way/I'll-go-that-way kind of dances with another runner who was just heading out. The whole stay to the left thing really gets me - I'm pretty sure the guy who set this all up lives in America, but maybe he's forgotten that we drive on the RIGHT side of the road here!)



Everything is timed by this fancy little chip you have velcroed to your ankle, so everytime you run over one of those handy orange mats, it records your time. If you notice, the sunglasses are now on top of my head. I usually don't run in them; I typically wear a hat. But after having a swim cap and a helmet on all morning and the temperature increasing as time went by, I felt it was going to be too hot for the hat that I had, so I decided to go with the head band and sunglasses for the run instead. Sometimes when my head gets that hot during a run, I like to pour a cup of water on it to cool down some. That works perfectly well when you have on a hat; not so well when you are wearing sunglasses. The lenses got all smeary - and notice I'm wearing what I wore in the pool, so it's not like I've got a dry patch of anything to wipe them on... so I had to run the rest of the way with them propped on my head. (Not exactly effective - but oh well - now I know...)



One more minor detail to remember for future races... If you look carefully at the picture of me leaving for my run (two pics up), you will notice something sticking out of the leg band of my shorts. Mid-bike ride, I ingested a little pack of Gu (that's really what it's called) - 100 calories of pure energy as a little pick me up for the rest of the race. Mmmm...I went with the Triple Berry flavor in honor of the triathlon. Not wanting to litter and following the tip of Emily, our queen leader, I put the wrapper in the leg band of my shorts when I was done to throw away later. Well, later finally came when I was done and Chris and I were sitting on a concrete parking lot block. I couldn't believe how sticky the magic marker was making the back of my hamstring! (For the record, when we took that group picture before the event began, I had the shadow marking of 28 on the back of my leg from squatting so low.) As I felt more and more, it finally dawned on my that the stickiness had absolutely nothing to do with marker - and everything to do with the pack of Gu that I forgot to take out of my leg band! This may be more information than you're interested in knowing, but apparently I littered on the run route because that little wrapper was nowhere to be found in my shorts!

(Littering, by the way, was very much the anti-image of this event. The Ramblin' Rose tris were all advertised as "Race without a Trace" and attempted to be carbon-neutral events. Packet pickup involved a (very cool) canvas messenger bag instead of a plastic throwaway bag and zero little slips of paper. All advertisements and coupons that often find their way into packet pick-up bags were delivered digitally to your email. Instead of paper cups or plastic bottles of water at the finish line, everyone was given a reusable plastic bike bottle and there were Primo water spigots (like Hinkley & Schmidt machines - except Primo's plastic is made from plants, not crude oil!) You could even buy $3 carbon offsets (but since we rode our bikes, I figured I did my part...)


And so I'm done - I've done it - I can officially call myself a triathlete. And I couldn't have done it (and nor would you have these fantastic photographs) without my dear husband! He was a trooper! (Did I mention that there were 400 women at this event? And did I mention that we then had a post-race party for the training group at our apartment building (rooftop/cabana room) from 3-7 later on in the day? And that he went down to the lobby to let them all in when they got there? And that he went and picked up the three batches of frozen gourmet custard (Red Raspberry, Oreo Mint, and Mocha Chip. Triple Mmmmm!) that Wolfie's donated for our party? I'm going to have to start calling him a saint!) I gave up at least two nights a week with him to train with the girls (sometimes three), so I really do appreciate all of his support these past six weeks. It got him fired up enough to want to do a triathlon as well. And, this was the kind of event that I definitely knew right away I would want to do again - (unlike when he suggested running another marathon as I was stretched out in the back seat thinking I was quite possibly never going to run again two hours after finishing my marathon four years ago.) At this point, I figured I put in all of this baseline groundwork - so why not do one more? Three weeks from now, Chris and I will both be competing in a sprint triathlon, which is just slightly longer - 300 yard swim, 12 mile bike ride, 3.1 mile run.

I promise the post won't be as long (and we obviously won't have many good pics), but we'll let you know how it goes! Our biggest concern is figuring out where we can swim (as inexpensively as possible) since my free membership at the Y is up. But then my cynical side says - does it really matter for you? You practiced an awful lot and it got you on the 7-minute side of nowhere... Maybe I could just go back to practicing in the bathtub.