So my stated goal for Sunday's race was to finish. I'd never actually finished an Olympic distance triathlon before -- one was turned into a duathlon due to scary water conditions and the other I DNF'd. Well, on that measure, I met my goal. I finished Sunday's Oly race - I have now officially completed that distance. I guess I should be happy, but instead I'm feeling kind of low about the whole situation, mostly because in my head, I was secretly hoping I would do better. Y'know how you have public goals and secret goals? Well, I totally blew my secret goal and my public goal was a pretty low threshold, so it's hard to be happy right now.
What happened? This:
This stupid blow-up man is my nemesis. My enemy. There are not enough words in the thesaurus to name him because it took me 77 minutes to get to him. Yes, my friends, it took me 77 minutes on the 1500m swim portion of Sunday's tri - longer than it took me to run 6.2 miles. Nearly as long as it took me to bike 24.8 miles. And the swim portion is supposed to be the short leg. I hate that blowup man.
The water was rough, the tide was high, the current was strong, and I had a panic attack. I got way off course before the first buoy (swimming diagonal across the tide) and just had a major freak out. Thankfully a great paddle boarder, named Hannah, came and let me rest for a bit and talked me off the shelf. Then, since all the other waves had gone through behind me, she stayed with me for the rest of the race. I'm pretty sure she was the main reason I didn't quit. I took a few more breaks as I got panicked. I was able to swim the whole thing - with the rest breaks - but it was hard. Really hard. The long stretch of the swim was against the current and I felt like I wasn't making any progress. The buoys weren't getting closer and the waves were making me sea sick. I tried to flip over and back stroke a few times, but I ended up going so far off course that we decided that wasn't a good option. I just needed to suck it up and keep swimming. The problem was, after all that time, I was not in good shape to finish the rest of the race -- mentally or otherwise. In fact, I was so convinced that I had missed the swim cut-off that I was completely shocked when hubby yelled out 77 minutes and the race director urged me to "pick up some time on the bike." I wanted to finish the race, so I kept going, but my mind was not in a good place.
Positive notes about the swim: I can stay in the water 77 minutes without turning into a raisin or freaking out because I can't touch the bottom. I'm not really afraid anymore when fish or other slimy things brush against me.
Negative notes about the swim: Currents are still hard for me. And I still need to get my mind right about swimming.
When I finally got on the bike, I was a mess. It took me a good 5 miles to get back into the race, but after that, I think my bike ride went very well - averaged 16.66 mph over a hilly course and was able to do well shifting Freyja, although I spent less time in aero than I would have liked. Between the hills, my shoulders being sore, and my mind being a mess, I was upright too much. I think that with a better swim, I could have easily gone over 17, maybe even closer to 18. That's a highlight in an otherwise crappy race.
And then the run. I knew setting out on the run that 1) it was hotter than hell and 2) I was cutting the time limits close. Unfortunately, the first item took hold of my mind rather than the second, although noone wants to end up in the med tent, so probably of the two, I picked the right one. After I got about a mile into the run, I was seeing all sorts of people -- very fit, and clearly fast, people -- walking the death march back into the finish line (it was an out-and-back). I figured if they were hurting from the heat I was probably going to be in bad shape with it. And so I set my watch to 2:1 (run 2, walk 1) and did the rest of the run that way. Was it fast? Not a chance. Did it keep me moving? You betcha. Did it keep me out of the med tent? Probably - and to be honest, I was so mentally down by that time, it may have actually helped me to finish, knowing that the watch would just keep telling me when to go and when to stop. If I had to figure it out myself, I may have just stopped. Period.
So what needs to happen next? I need to keep training. It was important for me to do this race and to learn from it -- probably even more important than it was for me to finish it. I have just under 2 months until the HIM and I will succeed.
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