At Least I Didn't DNF!

The swim start and finish.

I did my first Olympic size triathlon yesterday! I'm glad to say it's over. That tri was rough and I may have thought about DNFing. BRIEFLY! And, with slightly good reasons.....

Results, Olympic females 30-34

My wave was second to last of the day. The men were broken up into 3 waves, Clydesdales, 40+, and 39 and under. The Olympic women were ALL in one wave. That's 81 women running into the water and jockeying for a decent swim position. I realize we may have not had as many as the men but at least split that into two waves. 81 is ridiculous! And we didn't even get the choice of an Athena division! The men got a clydesdale division which was also broken up into age groups! We women were placed into age groups only. You know, when I get done with this post I think I will write a STRONGLY worded letter regarding this "oversight". Or, I could write to Gloria Allred!

Back to the matter at hand. The buoys marking the 0.93mile swim loomed large and quite a bit farther away than I thought they would be. When my wave went off I held back a bit. With 81 people swimming at once some one is bound to get kicked in the breast! I just didn't want to be that person. At a couple of points I did get squeezed between two other competitors but I backed off with the breast stroke and caught me breath a bit. At about the half way point I realized that I was getting passed by men. That's right. The wave that started 4 minutes after mine had caught up to me. I was a little upset with myself but what are you going to do? I just focused on my swimming and tried not to get swamped by the men.

I did have a couple of moments of panic. And, you'll laugh when you hear why. The swim went through some shallow water and I could see bottom. And the seaweed reaching up for me! I blame this panic on two things. 1) I watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire the night before and just saw grindylowes coming for me. 2) Growing up my dad and I watched A LOT of horror movies. One in particular, Creepshow2 The Raft, took place in a small lake and pulled people in and down. I fought through it and just moved into deeper water as best I could.

Coming out of the water was a chore! We had to run through sand and quite a distance to transition. But I made it and headed out on my bike, 25miles, after washing the sand off. The bike portion was really uneventful. I did stop once to check out my rear wheel. I felt as if something was holding me back and wondered if the brakes were somehow stuck. It was clear and I think it was just the wind. I got my bike legs about 10 miles in and made up time on the way back. With the wind behind me.

It was at T2 that I thought about DNFing but I don't think I could live with a DNF on my record if I didn't actually break something in the race. When I jumped off my bike and ran into transition my left hip twinged a bit. Then I took off my bike shoes, stepped down and felt a sharp pain in the side of my left foot. I had hoped lacing up my running shoes would help it but it did not. The hip pain went away but the foot pain was constant and caused me to do a lot more run/walk than I planned. The 6.2 mile run was mostly uneventful also,except for some random guy on his front porch who yelled random unintelligable things at me. I assumed he yelled these at everyone.





When I finally finished I raised my arms in elation when the announcer said my name. Since I was one of the last people to go through the refreshment table I walked away with a whole watermelon and a bunch of banans! No finisher medal from this one but I'll take the fruit! I also rewarded myself with a Turkey Dave from Dave's Cosmic Subs!