Am I a triathlete now?

As I reported in my previous post, I did an indoor triathlon on Valentine's Day. What follows shall be my rambling "race report." Just to recap, the format was 15 minutes of lap swimming, 15 minutes of stationary cycling, and 15 minutes of running on the indoor track, with 5 minute transitions from swimming to cycling, and from cycling to running.

The whole experience began with a bit of a registration snafu. Participants were broken up into heats, and heat information was supposed to be available on Friday. The event started at 8 a.m., with heats going off every 20 minutes, and they (the powers that be) recommended picking up a packet and getting heat information on Friday or Saturday, so that everyone wouldn't show up much earlier than was necessary. I called on Saturday afternoon and asked what heat I was in, only to be told, "I'm sorry, we don't seem to have your information." Commence slight freak-out, on my end. The woman put me on hold, while I frantically signed online to check my bank account so I could find out if they had cashed my registration check. My check had cleared, so when the woman came back onto the phone, I let her know the money had already been taken out of my account. She paused for a moment, I heard some papers being shuffled around, and she chirped, "Oh here you are! You're in heat 15, at 12:40." 

I was happy that they had at least found my information, but I was still a little bit thrown off by the momentary confusion. Since I wouldn't be racing until 12:40 on Sunday, I decided to drive over and grab my race packet so I wouldn't have to get to the YMCA at 7:00 a.m. on race morning. I hit another snag when I got to the check-in desk. The man handing out the packets checked his sheets, and told me "I'm sorry, we don't seem to have your name here." Argh! I told him I'd called not an hour ago and was supposed to be in heat 15. He seemed to have an epiphany when he heard that; he grabbed his papers, turned to the last page, and handwrote my name in a new column underneath the typeset registrants. That did not give me the warm and fuzzies. Luckily a gentleman signing in right behind me said he was also in heat 15, so that made it feel slightly more legitimate.

On Sunday, my sister met me at my house at 8:50, so we could get to the Y by 9:30. Some friends were competing in earlier heats, and we wanted to cheer them on. We ended up getting there way too early though, due to a miscommunication on my part. I thought the friends were starting at 10:00, when actually they were in heat 10, which went off at 11:00. We had plenty of time to watch other heats race. As I saw the huge range of swimming abilities in the pool, I slowly grew more confident about my own swim. There were a lot of talented swimmers, but there were also a number of people performing non-recognizable strokes, people stopping to rest at each wall, and even one guy wearing a snorkel. A SNORKEL! I'm not sure how that was allowed...

Fast forward about 3 hours, and I was all ready to go. I had my sports bra already on underneath my bathing suit (it turned out lots of women had the same idea), my compression shorts, sleeveless top, socks, and sneakers set out in a locker room cubby, and my number (101) Sharpie'd on my arm. I reported to the pool 10 minutes before my heat was set to go off, as instructed, and realized I was the only female in my heat. I had to laugh. My lap counter (each particpant in each heat had a lap counter to stand at one end of the pool) said, "You'll crush them all, girl power, right?" (This was coming from a 20-something man). I was nervous about my own ability, but not too worried about being shown up in a big way by the men in my heat - they were all probably over 40, and one was over 60, I'm guessing.

Since I was most worried about the swim portion, I was surprised to find that I felt relaxed and smooth throughout most of the laps. The 15 minutes in the pool went by quickly. I have absolutely no idea how many meters I swam, because I did not even attempt to keep track of the laps. I had a lap counter for that! He told me when I had 10 minutes left, 5 minutes left, and 2 minutes left. When the buzzer for "time's up" rang, I was at the opposite end of the pool from the counter, so I didn't get to ask him how far I had gone. My sister let me know I had managed to be the second-fastest swimmer in my heat, behind the guy she and her friends had apparently nicknamed "slappy" because he slapped the water hard with each stroke. I knew I had felt waves coming from the next lane over!!

In the locker room I threw my shorts and top on right over my bathing suit, dried my feet, and shoved them into my socks and shoes. I think the whole thing took 2 minutes. It took roughly another minute to get from the locker room upstairs to the cycling room, and I was the first person from my heat to get there. Unfortunately, we had to use recumbent bikes instead of spin bikes, because of a computer error that was making the spin bike data crash (or something like that...). The bikes had to be set to a resistance of 6. There were 2 monitors in the room, and while we rode, they played music, talked about triathloning, and came around to write down our final distances. I hadn't been too concerned about my biking ability, but after the 15 minutes were up, I was seriously reconsidering the amount of time I had devoted to bike training thus far. I must do more. My quads were feeling the burn, big time. I eked out 3.61 miles on the bike.

I didn't need to change clothes for the run, so I grabbed some water, and headed straight to the track after I finished with the cycling portion. Similarly to the swim leg, the run leg provided each particpant with its own lap counter. 14 laps around the indoor track = 1 mile. My lap counter was again a youngish man, and he had what I think was an Australian accent. Whatever kind of accent it was, I liked it. I asked him to call out every 5 laps for me (partially because I wanted to know how far I'd gone, and partially because I wanted to hear his voice...). I jogged and stretched for about a minute during transition, just to loosen up my quads. Right from the start of the run, it was apparent to me that I was going to be faster then all of the men (honestly, that doesn't say much about my running ability...remember they were all older gentlemen). Not having anyone to pace off of, I just kind of ran. I lapped everyone at least once (it was a super short track). My favorite heat-mate was the oldest (maybe 60?) one. Whenever I lapped him, he'd say "You go girl!" I found it very endearing. True to his word, my lap counter let me know every 5 laps that had gone by, but he also kindly shouted out encouragement each time I completed a lap. When there were 2 minutes left to go, I quickly calculated laps in my head and realized I'd been running a little more slowly than I had hoped. I wanted to get at least 2 miles in, so I picked it up a bit. I managed to finish my 28th lap and run a few more feet before time was called.

I still don't know what the official results for the triathlon are, or even what awards they give out, if they do awards at all. What I do know is the following: I am a stronger swimmer than I thought I was; I am a weaker biker than I thought I was; my running abilities are exactly what I thought they were; triathloning is fun; outdoor triathloning is going to be a whole different world, one I anticipate being a million times harder than the indoor race. 

And finally, I learned that I have a LONG way to go before I can even think about an Ironman.

But it was fun!!