First tri

Red Bank triathlon was my very first and, cliche or not, it will always hold a special place in my heart. We got up at 5 and looked out the window into steely clouds and pouring rain. It wasn't a cold rain, I guess that was something. By 5:30 we were on our way, the old clunker mountain bike tucked into the back of the minivan (you can fit so much crap in a minivan!), my bag stuffed with my bike helmet to the wetsuit and everything in between.

I felt jittery and took a turn off of a rotary so hard that Diane's morning coffee --an item without which she cannot survive-- spilled all over her legs. I worried that she was there at all. What if I failed and had to quit? It was going to be wet. I was certainly going to make a fool of myself. And now I'd spilled her coffee everywhere. I should have told her to stay in bed.

Fortunately Diane is plucky and reassuring. As soon as we got parked she became calm and sensible, while I began panicking about under inflated bike tires (I forgot my pump, of course, but about 1,000 other people had pumps, so I really didn't need to panic). Then I worried about my bike's brakes. Diane saw through the nerves and just jostled me on down to the transition area where I could set up my stuff. The rain had eased back to a kind of damp mist at this point.

On my way into transition, a lady with a fat Sharpie marker came over and asked me my name and if I was doing the short course (sprint) or long course (olympic) distance. I mumbled answers and then felt the cool wetness of the marker on the back of my calves as 36 and S were written on them. Someone gave me a wrist band that indicated I was a racer so I could get into the transition area and the lady with the pen noted my race number and wrote it vertically on my upper arms. The numbers felt very official and badass. They reminded me of hieroglyphics.

Diane wasn't racing, so she didn't have a wristband and she couldn't go with me into the transition area. Probably the toughest part of the whole day was that moment when I had to separate from Diane and go face transition on my own. I tried to look cool, but inside I was complete jello.

I had read up about triathlons and knew to have a plan for how to set up my gear in transition. I found a space on the racks and began putting things in order as I'd practiced at home. I felt like a total impostor. On the one hand, I was too scared to even look around me at everyone else, and on the other, I was sure they were all skinny beautiful competent people and that I really didn't belong among them.

I pulled off my sweats revealing my spandex shorts and tech shirt underneath and then began the process of getting into the wetsuit. There is no pretty way to get into (or out of) a wetsuit. In the end, I looked exactly like I'd been poured into a sausage casing.

Here I am in my suit. Note the ominous cloud cover in the background. The skies were about to open.

Finally I got to go back out and find Diane and stand around in the rain, feeling so grateful for her company and wishing we could just get started already. There was a lot of waiting around, watching other groups get in the murky looking river water of the Navesink. I had been nervous about it being really cold, but when my "wave" of participants was finally called to get in, I was pleased to discover that 65 degrees is practically warm when you are in a wetsuit. [Side note: I have since raced in water as cold as 58 degrees and even that wasn't too bad.]

Here's me at the start. I was one of the first in. There were about 30 others in my wave. 

I began to notice how incredibly nice everyone around me was (and how, in fact, many different body types were represented) as soon as we began lining up to get in the water. Everyone was chatting, encouraging one another. It set me at ease.

Be the time the air-horn blew to start us off, I found myself completely unworried. The only thing to do was one thing at a time. Get to the first buoy, get to the next, turn to the right, keep going...and so on. My goals was simple: to finish my first triathlon. That was it. If I could do it in some kind of respectable time, so much the better, but I didn't give speed too much thought. 

The swim is the shortest portion of any triathlon (too bad, because I love the water, even murky gross water like the Navesink), so I was out an into T1 --that's lingo for the first transition-- within 10 minutes. I fought with my wetsuit and finally won, put on socks and shoes, helmet and gloves, and headed off to the bike. I spotted Diane, gamely cheering me on as the rain began to pick up. 

Here I am on my super clunker bike I got at Target in 2003. No joke.

The rain just poured and poured during the hour I was on the bike. I covered 15 miles of rolling hills that felt like enormous, steep hills, but reminded myself just to take it one thing at a time. 

It was somewhere on the bike course that I realized how much fun I was having.  Unlike a half marathon, where there is altogether too much time to get up in your head, to think and obsess and get tired and moody, in triathlon your mind is always on "what's next?" In running events, the goal is just get from point A to point B. In triathlon there are lots of points, and each one requires different muscles, thoughts and strategies. I was on the course for almost as long as I would be for a half marathon (okay, maybe 40 minutes less) and the experience was extremely taxing on my body, but psychologically I found it easier. 

Amazingly I put in a sub 30 minute 5k run at the end. I didn't learn that until I got home and got my final times, but when I did find out I was in shock. I have no idea how I did it. To this day I believe there may have been some kind of error. But everyone says there wasn't. I had, up to that point, never run a sub 30 minute 5k, and certainly never done so after just biking for 15 miles. 

It was a great day. I went home completely elated, so grateful to have had all the support from Diane, and so smitten with the sport of triathlon. It was the beginning of a new era.