Wyckoff -Franklin Lakes Triathlon, 6/18/2011

I am standing on the edge of the water of a beautiful lake. It’s a warm, sunny, lovely morning. I dig my bare feet in the sand a bit and look out over the water again. And I completely panic.

This is it. Today is the morning of my first triathlon of the season. This one is the Wyckoff-Franklin Lakes Triathlon in Franklin Lakes, NJ. The race is a ½ mile swim, 17 mile bike ride and 5 mile run.

The race is probably the biggest triathlon I’ve been in, with over 800 competitors. Because there are so many of us, the swim portion is done in waves. They do it by age and gender, putting this 42 year old woman in the second-to-last wave of the day. This gives me opportunity to watch people much younger and more athletic then me jump into the water and start their races. This also allows me to watch about a dozen of these young, athletic people get fished out of the water by lifeguards about 50 feet into their race, which does nothing to quell my fears.

Finally, it’s time for my wave to line up. We’re all women aged 40 – 49. I’m even convinced that the guy with the bull horn telling us to line up at the water’s edge is talking a bit louder, figuring we’re all experiencing the onset of age induced deafness. The gun goes off for my wave, and there is a flurry of arms and legs in front of me. I wade in for as long as seems reasonable, then finally stick my face in the water and start to swim.

Water is amazing. The first thing it does is completely release one’s memory of everything important, which at this moment is HOW to swim. Finally, there is one calm, coherent area of my brain that takes over and reminds me how to stroke, breathe and kick through the water. I move forward and try to get into a rhythm, but it’s crowded. The congestion of swimmers stops me from getting into a good groove. I finally turn at the first buoy and find some space. As I turn the second buoy and start swimming back towards shore, the sun is right in my face and I can’t see anything. I turn to the power of prayer for the first of many times today and ask God for a little help getting back to shore. The lake is full of weeds and I get tangled up quite a bit. Each time I keep thinking its “Fat Girl”, pulling me back, reminding me I’m too fat to be doing this. At one point I gain another moment of clarity, stop and pull all the weeds off of me and then quite calmly swim back to shore and run out of the water.

I run back to the transition area that is just a sea of bicycles. Ok, fine. By the time I get to it, there are maybe 100 or so bikes left and a sea of bike racks, towels and discarded wetsuits. One trick I learned is to bring a balloon and tie it to your bike rack so you can find your transition area easily. The balloon I have this time says, “Happy Retirement”, which I found ridiculously funny when I bought it the day before. I find my balloon, yank off my wetsuit, throw on my sneakers, don my helmet, grab my bike, and take off for the bike portion.

The bike section of the triathlon is my absolute worst. I used to be horrible at swimming, so I trained like crazy. Now, I merely suck at swimming and biking is the worst of the 3 sports for me. And it’s the longest. In my two training rides here, it took me 1 hour and 20 minutes to ride the 17 mile course. I exit the transition area and push off on my bike. And I all think is “go”. A lot of experts say to hold back a bit on the bike portion in order to have something left for the run, but all I think is that I’m slow enough as it is, and I need to push it. So I push. Hard. During my ride I tell myself to keep pedaling, go faster, harder. The area we’re biking through is absolutely beautiful, but I notice nothing. I pedal, push myself, breathe. That’s it.

Even with all my efforts, I still get passed. A lot. Other bikers politely yell “on your left” and then fly past me like their bikes are motorized and I’m pedaling a tricycle (once or twice I actually glance over to make sure they are pedaling on their own power).

At about mile 8 we hit the first of 3 substantial hills. I drop into a low gear, put my head down, and go. I keep saying to myself, “You got this. You can do this.” I slowly make it up the hill and almost stop at the very top; I’m just too tired. Then a guy passes me, but instead of yelling “On your left”, he keeps pace with me for a few seconds and says, “I watched you get up the hill. Nice job. Keep going.” Then he takes off. This completely energizes me and I continue along as if I haven’t been working out for over an hour at this point.

At mile 15 we hit the last two hills, one right after the other. All I think is what that guy said: “Nice job. Keep going.” And I do. I practically soar up those hills (ok, I climbed slower than a turtle, but in my own head I was breaking sound barriers). I got up those hills and sprinted the last almost 2 miles to the end of the bike course. I look at my watch to see how I did on the bike. 1 hour, 9 minutes, a whopping 11 minutes faster than each of my training rides. All right!

I again find my “Happy Retirement”, rack my bike and take off for the run. The run is my favorite part and my strongest leg. Most people experience “dead leg” when they get off their bikes and say that their legs just don’t move properly for the first few miles of a race. I’ve been practicing this transition for almost a year, and my legs respond perfectly – they also feel dead, but only for the first 200 yards or so, then they are ready to rock ‘n roll.

In this triathlon, they wrote our age on the back of our right calf. My age group is women 40 – 44, so these are the only people in the race that I really care about. My plan is to pass as many people in my age group as I can so as not to be last. Every time I see a woman with 40-something written on her calf, I get her in my sights, click into overdrive and pass her like my ass is on fire. To pass one woman, I first have to sprint past a 35 year old guy. As I pass him, I hear him utter a word I don’t let my kids use and then slow to a walk. It suddenly dawns on me that passing others on the run (especially guys who are younger than me) completely crushes their spirit – and I love it. I pass two more guys and cackle silently to myself as I hear them slow to a walk. Bwahahaha!

Suddenly, up ahead I see the guy who passed me on the bike and helped me after the first big hill. He’s walking. I catch up to him, and as I pass him I smile and say, “You got this. Come on!” He smiles and manages a quick “thanks!” as he picks up his pace and starts running again.

At about mile 3 there are 4 women in front of me. Two are in their 20s, one is 36, and one is 41. The 41 year old is the only one I care about, but to pass her I have to sprint past the others. So, I do. About 10 seconds later, the two 20 year olds (who are running together) sprint past me, and then the 36 year old does. All I think to myself is “I don’t think so,” and catch up to them at the next hill and take over the lead of our mini pack. The 41 year old catches up and passes all of us. For the last mile and a half, the 5 of us play this cat and mouse game. Finally, the two 20 year olds give up and drop behind me. At this moment, the 36 and 41 year olds are both in front of me. I think my favorite mantra, “You got this” and I find the last reserve of energy inside my body. I first pass the 41 year old and hear that spirit crushing sound of her pace slowing to a walk, and then for the pure joy of it I pass the 36 year old. I turn the last corner before the finish line and see two more people in front of me and I manage to sprint past both of them and still have enough energy to throw my arms up in the air as I hit the finish line. I look at my watch; 2 hours, 31 minutes, 17 seconds. Not bad for this former fat girl who was in a complete panic just a few hours ago.

I find my friend Jeff who did the race with me (and finished so much earlier than me that he had time to pack up his stuff and change. I think he even went out for coffee, jerk). As we go to pack up my transition area, I realize my “Happy Retirement” balloon is gone. It either blew away or someone swiped it. Regardless, I take it as a sign that I have a lot of triathlons left in me.

As Jeff and I are leaving the race, the 36 year old woman from the running pack comes up to me. She tells me that she absolutely loved the chase game we had going, and I completely motivated her to keep going. I agreed that I loved the friendly competition (and neglected to tell her my utter joy of passing people and beating them) and thanked her for the kind words.

As I drive home from the triathlon, I think of the entire experience: competing against others, helping athletes reach their potential, having them help me reach mine. I think about digging deep to find that last ounce of energy. I think about losing 70 pounds, and training almost every day for the last 3 years. And I realize something: 3 years ago I would have taken that initial panic and turned it into an excuse to quit. Today I turned into fuel to do probably my best triathlon – to date :-).