Race report: Tri in the Buff

For some reason, I had a nutty.

I don't know exactly why but on Sunday morning, the butterflies were uncontrollable. I was, well, slightly terrified entering my first intermediate distance triathlon and really for no good reason. I had done 1500 meters in the water before. A bike ride of 24 miles? That's fun. A 10K run? Didn't I just do a marathon?

But something about the combination of events had me nervous. More nervous that I had been in recent memory. In fact, I was about as nervous as I was before the marathon, where I broke down into tears before the start, but this time I had no clue where my anxiety was coming from.

Luckily, a year into triathlon and I have some pretty good friends at races. And a slew of them helped calm me down, reminding me that it was just nerves and that everyone gets nervous. Diane reminded me that we even wake up nervous for a training 5K race. Greg reminded me that indeed I know how to swim and that I just need to think long, smooth strokes.

Once I get past the swim, I'll be fine, I said. But on the inside, I was also dreading the run, too, which would affect me later.

But first, the swim. It was a 1500 meter swim and two laps of the course -- a giant rectangle. As usual, I stayed in the back of my wave and, again as usual, it took me a while to get started. I walked out as far as I could. Put my face in the water. Floated with my face in the water. Took a few strokes. Treaded water.

Ok. Just start swimming.

And I did. My first few strokes in open water are always terribly ugly. Then I get the feel of movement in my wetsuit and get my groove. I counted five strokes then looked up to sight (without stopping, mind you). This was a challenge because when I swim, I breathe only to my left. The buoys were on my right. So sighting was important.

Still, I was about as straight on for a swim as I have ever been.

By the time I got to the third buoy and the turn to swim across the rectangle, the men's wave that started after my wave caught me. I pulled up and started to do the breaststroke around the buoy. It then took me a minute or two before I started swimming again, choosing to let the fast guys duke it out ahead of me.

Swimming again, I rounded for the home stretch of the first lap. I kept swimming. I got hit in my feet a few times, but nothing major. Perhaps I did about 10 strokes of breaststroke total the rest of the swim. I just kept going. Steady. That's what I was thinking. Keep swimming steady.

And as I started to see shore it hit me. The biggest news of the day: Not one kayak, surfboard or canoe was part of my swim. For the first time in a race I did not need to rest on a water safety craft.

This was momentous.

My swim time still looked slow as I got out of the water. Popular opinion after the race was that swim course was laid out long since everyone felt they had good swims and everyone had slow times in relatively calm water. Heck, I'd be glad if it was longer -- that mean's my swim was even better. Even so, the quality of my swim is what mattered. And I felt good.

My first transition was smooth. In fact, all my transitions are smooth. If there ever could be a duathlon that was transition and cycling, I would podium every time. Just saying.

The bike course was again two loops for me -- a 40K distance. My goal was to have to a solid bike but to hold back a bit. I didn't want to expend myself too much on the bike and have dead legs for the run. This is difficult for me because I love the bike. I smile almost the entire time on the bike. And I certainly did on this course.

My other goal on the bike was to practice my nutrition. I cut up a Clif Bar and put it in my "bento box" on my bike. In the first 10 minutes I ate about half of it and washed it down with a sports drink. I sipped the sports drink about every 10 minutes or so. Later in the bike, I switched to water to make sure I wasn't creating a carbohydrate mess in my stomach.

To me, the bike course was fast and I enjoyed every minute of it. I aimed for high cadence and adjusted my gears accordingly. A bigger, harder gear might make me go a mile an hour faster but saving my legs was important.

I still finished the bike in around 1:22, averaging around 18 miles an hour and feeling rather fresh.

I transitioned to the run -- again two loops of the course for 10K. Parts of this course at Evangola State Park go "off road" through the grass and, with the amount of rain we had recently, through some mud. Personally, I didn't care for the trail running part of the course. I actually felt more pain on the grass than I did on the pavement.

My legs actually felt good and as I was running the first 5K I was pretty amazed with how good it felt. But I was cautious. The sun was out in force by now and parts of the run were in the open with no shade. Perhaps I was a bit too cautious. Because my legs felt good and my fitness felt good yet I kept my run to a nice, steady jog. This is where I may have psyched myself out earlier in the week, noting to friends that I had never run a 10K before. I've run more than that distance and the 6.2 miles is something I've likely done in hour-long training runs before. But specifically a 10K? I couldn't picture how that would feel and the uncertainty of that unknown held me back a bit.

Ah, but just a bit.

My pace was slow, but I did the run in a hour and six minutes.

Grand total for my first intermediate distance triathlon: 3 hours, 30 minutes, 17 seconds.

Right about what I thought I would do for my first attempt at the distance on a normal training week.

When I was about to start the second loop of my run, I saw my friend Diane who caught my eye and said, "no fear now."

I smiled.

Because it feels like time and time again, I'm looking right in the face of fear -- my fears -- and time and time again, it is fear who is blinking first.