Race report Bountiful Tri 2011

This was a reverse triathlon, run, bike, swim, ending in a pool. The pool swim was in yards, and you swam up one length, went under the lane line, and swam down the next length. The run was supposed to be 5k, but I think was a little long. The bike was supposed to be about 11 miles, and I think it was about right. The swim was 350 yards. I actually prefer reverse triathlons to regular ones because when I am tired, I want to be in the water, and not running. Technique takes over there, and I have swim technique. Running is not as much technique (at least for me) as it is sheer, brute power.

I was doing the race with my kids and my husband, which makes it more fun because I have people to talk to about the race and people to see during the race. And of course, I like to encourage my family to do the healthy sport of triathlon. I'm not willing usually to go slow enough to stay with the kids or my husband, so as soon as we line up, I toe the line and they hang back and we wave if we see each other during the race, then I wait for them and cheer at the finish line. It's expensive to race this many people, and I don't ordinarily do this distance because I'm more naturally more suited to long courses. But maybe not, actually.

I let myself go a little easier on the run than I have been wont to do. This was partly because it isn't my A-race and I hadn't tapered much for it. It did allow me to do an interesting experiment, which was to see what happened if I hung back on the run to the rest of the race. What happened was that though I finished the run in fifth place, in 24:22, which is not my best 5k time. The course was long by the estimates of those with Garmin watches, but it was very flat. I got out of transition in my fastest time ever (:43). I struggled to get clipped into my bike, and I didn't push it on the first mile. A couple of guys passed me and I let them go.

But when I got into my rhythm, I really pushed it. I cranked down into my lowest gear and I was going about 25-26 miles an hour. I flew over the course, ended up getting stopped at a light at an intersection that wasn't controlled, and just kept pushing. There was a guy I kept chicking who fought back and tried to pass me three or four times, but I passed him back. At the turnaround, there was a long slight incline and I dropped to about 22 mph there. One by one, I caught every woman ahead of me, the last one at about mile 8. Then I just got into transition. Again, I had a great transition, getting out of my tri shorts, shoes and socks, and taking off my race belt, while putting on cap and goggles in under 45 seconds to run barefoot to the swim entry. I swam it in under 5:30, which is pretty darn good. When I got out of the pool at the end, I couldn't see any women anywhere, so I sat and waited until my competition came out three minutes later.

This is, to my recollection, the first time I have taken first overall in a race since I started triathlon about six years ago. I've taken first in my age group before. And I've taken second and third place overall on a few occasions in the last year, as I've gotten faster. But never first. So yeah me! I got a plaque and a gift certificate to a local bike shop. One of the women in my age group came up to me after the awards. She got first place in the age group and she told me she had turned to her husband, saying she knew it wasn't right because I was ahead of her. But then she realized I had won and she was really impressed. At our ancient age, that I could take first overall. That felt nice.

What was interesting about this to me it felt anti-climactic. My kids were decidedly uninterested, telling me they were sure I'd won first before. They didn't win. I made excuses in my head about the fact that the race was short, which doesn't tend to bring out the hard core triathletes. Plus it was a pool swim and reverse and there were lots of beginners there. My real competition didn't show up. So that means it doesn't count, right? And besides, I have a really nice bike, and I have lots of time to train and I've been doing this for a while.

Even though this was going on in my own head, I was reminded strongly of a conversation I had with my oldest, 17, in the car yesterday. We had been out shopping for school clothes and she was modestly explaining that she wasn't a very good swimmer. It is true that she didn't win races on the swim team, so I thought for a bit that she was comparing herself to hard core swimmers. But when I asked her to think of ANYTHING that she thought she did really well, there was a long silence in the car. I suggested that she was good at Calculus, since she got a 5 on the AP test. But she said that was last year. I asked if she was good at Physics. Or at computer programming, since she has a job getting paid a good amount of money and just went on a trip to a national conference to take the official test to be certified as a professional. But no, she wasn't good at any of those things, she said. She finally came up with "Sleeping." She thought she was a pretty good sleeper.

My mind boggled. Is this something she has absorbed from me? Probably it is. I think my parents were really invested in making sure that the kids in our family didn't brag about our natural intelligence, so they downplayed it. I appreciate the need to show your kids that getting good grades isn't the only important thing in life, but I think we actually became blind to an assessment of our real abilities. I don't know why 15 doesn't have this problem, but when she was little and we had her at a psychologist, he asked her who was the smartest kid in her class, and she said proudly that she was. He said that according to the tests she had taken, it was pretty likely that this was true, and that she actually had a very good grasp of what was reality. Yet sometimes it feels to me like she is bragging. She is very harsh when measuring other people according to her scale. She can also be harsh on herself.

I also took 7th place overall at this race. That means the only people who beat me were 6 guys, all younger than me. Three of them I let beat me because I didn't see any women near by and they were annoying me in their attempts to beat each other. I decided to hang back and let them smack each other in the water and I'd stay out of the fray. One of the guys got out next to me and nearly collapsed. I did really, really well. I am good at triathlon. I am going to say that again, so I believe it. I'm really good at triathlon. I'm an amateur, but I have a national ranking. I'm over 40 and I can wipe the floor with my younger competition. This is really cool. No wonder people remember this about me, when they think of my name. It is remarkable, and my story of being an unsuccessful swimmer in high school makes this even more so.

So now I am going to figure out what I should do for a celebration for this very cool accomplishment of mine. It is true that sometimes I defuse my anxiety about races by reminding myself that I am only racing against myself, that I have done the preparation, and I need to depend on the fact that I will do my best. It isn't my placement in the end that matters because I can't control other people. I don't know who will show up at the race and I can't beat all of them. Nonetheless, I control myself and I did awesome. I feel so weird saying that, like I need to qualify it and explain why I'm not bragging. Are people reading this going to be annoyed with me?

Three more races in the next six weeks to look forward to.