Overall results from last Saturday's event. I have been telling anyone who asks that it was all fine except the swim. I'm already getting tired of hearing myself tell the story about how once the swim started, I felt that nothing worked, I couldn't get my breath, and I thought about bagging the whole thing. But part of the story that I haven't told is that, while having a small panic attack 50 yards from the shore, I also thought, Well, you're giving yourself a good scare here, aren't ya. I thought about the trial my co-worker had a couple weeks ago, an eviction case featuring this bloated bully lawyer on the other side who objected to every question she asked and yelled at her witnesses on cross-ex, all the sort of thing that was NOT one of the reasons I wanted to be a lawyer but which I will likely get to experience now that I am; I thought about a hearing I have coming up with the Housing Authority; I thought about a presentation I had to put together for this week; I thought about all the opportunities for a good scare that were coming up, and none of them seemed all that scary compared to what was happening right then.
After a couple minutes I had enough composure to start feeling self-conscious about looking like I apparently had never learned to swim, or had never practiced until that day. After several more minutes, after rounding the second buoy (the swim course was triangle-shaped), things were a lot smoother but I just never felt like my position was right. I wore the wetsuit after all, so in a way it was true that I had never practiced until that day. My swim training was like practicing for a walk on the moon by walking back and forth to the mailbox over and over again. Did not translate well. I was toasty warm though.
The bike and run quenched my hill-climbing appetite. I had to walk my bike a few steps on one of the last hills. The start of the run course--all on a singletrack dirt trail, my ideal running environment--was uphill for about half a mile. A 48-year-old woman (all participants have their ages written in magic marker on the back of their leg) was walking up the hill ahead of me and although I was trying to jog, I was unable to catch her until we got to the top. The advantage of getting so far behind in the swim is that I was able to spend the bike and run catching people.
If I had been in the age 60-99 division, my finishing time would have put me in second place. Well. No sense getting ahead of myself.
1 comment:
I'm so impressed by your efforts here, both your physical and your mental/emotional work. You're the bomb!!
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