Fast forward

Just before heading back to work in late January Diane and I did the whirlwind trip to Key West. The island was pretty, the sunlight was refreshing, the race was steamy, and my race time was just a bit slower than what I ran in Trenton. We were only there for 47 hours, but we made the most of it: wandered the town, walked the beaches, ate out. It was a hoot. Oh, and the finishers’ medals were the prettiest I’ve seen. My call on destination races: more please!

Setting off for Key West.     Our puddle jumper from Ft. Meyers to the island.

My view while racing.        Finish line at 9:30am. Plenty of time for fun.

February was a kind of doldrums month. I ran five days per week or more, but they were just boring old miles around town. I sort of “forgot” to swim. In fact, I had a new teaching schedule that made getting to the pool at work impossible during its open hours. Mainly I’d lost my motivation somewhere.

I went to DC and bought an awesome old triathlon bike of Kathy’s from her, she showed me how to clean the chain and everything, but on its maiden voyage at home I blew a tire (not a tube, a tire). I was already shaky on the thing and that spooked me even worse. I took it to the local bike shop, they said they’d order me new tubes and tires and put them on, and then I left it there for about ten weeks before picking it up. *Sigh.

Blue, my beautiful, neglected triathlon bike.

In March I went to DC and ran the Rock n’ Roll DC half marathon with Diane. The race was enormous, hot and disorganized. I could forgive Trenton being disorganized in its first year and after a hurricane, but DC was part of the Rock n’ Roll franchise, and they have been putting on these events for years. At Philly they seemed to have a good system, and I’d sworn to Diane that the DC half would be better organized than Trenton. I was wrong.

Packet pick-up required a lengthy trip on the packed Metro (as did returning to the hotel post race). And an old friend from high school (who I had secretly had a terrible crush on) got in touch to say she was running Rock n’ Roll DC and did I want to get together with her and her family afterwards. I agreed and then instantly regretted it.

The rain that was predicted held off, but the race temperature went from chilly to hot very quickly. I spent most of the run fretting about seeing the old friend from high school. My crush had long since worn off, but there is something about a high school crush that sticks with you. I could still feel the exact shape and size of the ball of longing that had existed in me at age 16. My emotions ran from pride that I could show off my awesome Diane, to fear that I would say something stupid, to worry that I would be feeling like shit after the race and in no mood to socialize. Those worries all turned out to be prescient.

I was running strong until mile 9, at which point I got such serious gastrointestinal pain that I had to walk the last four miles. And damn it, but there was the darn joggler again! And he passed me at mile 10. Every time I attempted even a minimal jog I’d think I was going to poop my pants. There was nary a port-o-potty on the whole course, which, when you have 28,000+ runners out there, seems like a bit of an oversight. My race time: 2:40:57. Yeesh.

Before Rock n’ Roll DC. The Joggler!! Not sure if you can see him very well over there, but he’s just in front of the stop light.

Here’s a pic of the crazy line for bag retrieval. And I was in the middle of the line when I took it.

The meet-up with the high school friend went about like I expected. She nursed her infant and tried to keep control of her four year old. Her red-headed husband seemed very nice. My GI tract was still bothering me, and the food at the hotel restaurant, where we met up, looked delicious but I couldn’t stomach it. Conversation was basically a kind of recitation of our LinkedIn profiles sprinkled with a few reminiscences of running cross-country and playing squash together in high school. Later we went for a little walk around the hotel and talked in a bit more depth, but it was awkward and kind of draining.

I returned from the weekend feeling wrung out and seeking vindication for the race which should have gone so much better if my gut hadn’t gone wonky on me. I signed Diane and me up for the Asbury Park ½ that was only a month away. I couldn’t let DC be the final word in my half marathon season (and by this point I had begun to think in terms of “seasons” rather than assuming DC would be the end of my whole half marathon career).

The rest of March and beginning of April was taken up mainly with work, but the Asbury Half went much better than DC. I loved the course. It was a smaller and more intimate feeling race. I bested my time from Trenton by five minutes for a new PR of 2:18:34.

Just before running Asbury I had decided to get serious about swimming and signed up for a masters swim team that met three days a week at the Peddie school pool. The times didn’t conflict with my work schedule, but that was mostly because they were from 5:30-7am. Ouch. But I had made a decision to get serious about the Red Bank Triathlon. I had been on the fence about even trying it, but I decided to go for it. I started going to bed at 9:30pm so I could withstand the 4:45am alarm (I have to get up early enough to eat some breakfast or all bets are off).

Masters swim was seriously intense, and if you remember back, I had been swimming consistently in November and the first half of December only to peter out at Christmas. Here it was, four months later, and I had no swimming muscles at all. We were doing speed drills, pull sets, all kinds of stuff I’d never even heard of.

Fortunately, I liked the people I was swimming with, mostly other 30 - 50 somethings who were trying to get ready for triathlons. Also, swimming is the one sport of the three in triathlon that I feel truly comfortable with. Putting in the hours at the pool quickly began to pay off. My speed was picking up and so was my stamina. But the end of the fourth week I was swimming between 2,700 and 4,000 yards (more than 2 miles) three times a week, and my first triathlon swim was only 500 meters, basically a ten minute swim. I knew I had that in the bag as long as I kept going to masters faithfully.

So, the next question was the bike. I finally hitched up my courage, went down to the local bike shop and retrieved the poor thing. I put in three rides on her, each one a white knuckle affair lasting only a few miles. Then I switched back to my trusty old (also neglected) mountain bike. The riding was a little easier, but I still didn’t do nearly enough. Since rain was predicted for race day, I decided I’d have to ride the mountain bike if I was to complete the event at all. Tiny tri bike tires were not something I was willing to attempt dealing with in the rain.

Altogether I logged six --and I truly wish I was kidding-- SIX actual training sessions on my bike before the race.

If my bike block wasn’t bad enough, I was also struggling with the fact that I would be swimming in a wetsuit. The water temperature in the Navesink river, where my first tri would take place, would be 66+/- degrees, so swimming without a wetsuit was not something I was going to deal with. Kathy sent me her suit, but I struggled to get it on. I squoze myself into it for 45 minutes while Valentine kept up a steady stream of chatter: “Mom, I don’t think that’s supposed to go on that way. Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Ooh, your belly is too flumpy to fit in there.” It was a hot mess, and I’m pretty sure I was trying to put it on inside out.

Me in the bathtub, trying to put on Kath’s wetsuit.

Fortunately my friend Maria had a slightly larger suit to loan me. She lives closer, too, and was willing to make a house call. She not only brought me her suit, she also helped me learn how to get into it.

At this point I wouldn’t say I was “well prepared” for my first triathlon, but at least I had all the components necessary to participate. I also had a vague certainty that I could complete the event without having a heart attack or a bike accident. I practiced the transitions and tried out the wetsuit while swimming in the pool, just to get a feel for it. I was about as ready as I was going to get.

Diane wanted to come with me to cheer me on and make up for that unfortunate day in Philly when she hadn’t been able to make it to the finish line, but we needed someone to stay with Valentine. It wasn’t sensible to get the kid up at 4:30am on a Sunday morning to go stand in the rain as I went by on a my bike. We’d hoped my mom could stay over and be there to make her breakfast in the morning, but mom has been suffering from some serious back problems following chemotherapy that she had to treat uterine cancer last summer. We didn’t want to push it by asking her, and were prepared for Diane simply to stay home. I knew I’d be just fine on my own. But at the last minute mom said she’d be up for it, and so Diane would be able to come with me.