Musselman Half-Iron Triathlon - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

My wave consisted of 18-29 males and 18-34 women. There was a steady amount of wind, so the lake was pretty choppy. If I had to pick one word to describe this swim, it would be: MESS.

The course is very unique, because one can run out to the first buoy rather than swim to it. At this race, I found out what happens when people are given the option to either swim or run through water: they do all sorts of variations of swimming and water-running. Personally, I chose to swim. What is the issue with swimming while others keep abruptly standing up to run? Well. The swimmers will inevitably crash headfirst into the runner's butt. Let me assure you, this is unpleasant! I would venture to guess that it was especially unpleasant for me, as I was trying to keep my poor broken finger away from any excessive contact. Shortly before I rounded the first buoy, a girl who was going the wrong way swam right into my head. With her head. Ouch! Clearly, she would have been better off with the running option. Or a duathlon.

After the first turn, sighting became very difficult since the water was choppy and the buoys were too far apart. The first swim wave also had some very slow moving neon pink caps, which were very easy to mistake as buoys. I accidentally followed a few. In general, my sighting was pretty crappy, but heading to the pink caps was by far my worst mistake. They were way off course and I spent the entire second leg fighting the waves to get back on course.

Just past the last turn, I encountered a pair of legs and a butt that looked a lot like Steve's. I checked the swim cap color, and it was from his wave, which started four minutes behind me. If this was indeed Steve, it meant my swim was definitely not going well, but it also meant that I had someone I knew I could draft off of. I followed the Alleged Steve until he stood up at the end to run the last 100 yards to the swim finish. It was him - how cool is that? I am impressed with my ability to recognize Steve in a wetsuit, from behind, in the middle of a race. Now that is true love.

I think I would pick a race with a normal water depth, where people actually had to swim the entire course! Also, I probably would try to avoid breaking my finger three weeks before the race.

Removed my wetsuit in the water so I could run into transition faster.

I had to wear my prescription goggles for the run into transition. So of course, people were all like, "take off your goggles". And I was all like, "they're prescription". For my next race, I am considering putting a sign on the inside bib of my wetsuit to explain this to everyone so they don't all laugh and point. Or at least, they laugh and point at the sign, rather than the dork who "forgot" to remove her goggles.

Note: The bike time you see is the time I would have had if my bike seat had not fallen off. My official bike time was 3:20:39. Boo!

This bike course was half as hilly and twice as windy as my normal training route. The first 15 miles took forever because we were all battling a steady headwind. It was an ego killer, but it was better than being in that lake! Once the course turned to the east, I started cruising. YES!

I was still going strong when I started climbing the only real hill on the course. And then I felt something sharp on my ass. WTF? After a minute, I realized I had gotten stung by a bee. This caused me to spend the rest of the hill climb fishing around in my bike shorts with my hand to try and get the stinger out, much to the amusement of the guys behind me.

Shortly after the bee sting was resolved, I started to notice that my bike seat was moving back and forth with every pedal downstroke. At first I thought it was my imagination. Maybe I was stung by something poisonous and was now hallucinating that my bike seat was now moving around like a carousel horse on a merry-go-round? But no, the situation continued to worsen. A couple of miles later, the movement got so bad I realized I needed to get off my bike and check it out, because it was noticeably slowing me down. YUP. The thingies that hold my seatpost to my bike seat were not where they belonged, causing the back of my bike seat to no longer be one with the bike.

Let me take a minute to write a message to anyone who has a Quintana Roo carbon seatpost setup from the past few years. It is cheap and crappy, and this could happen to you! I am not the first person who has had a bike seat fall off a QR in a race. ALWAYS carry the wrench that comes with the bike and also take an allen wrench. The wrench they give you is not enough to fix your seat.

Of course, I only had the wrench that came with the saddle, so I was pretty limited in my ability to fix things. It took me about ten minutes to get the seat back on, and I only very briefly considered throwing my bike into the corn field. Because I couldn't really adjust the seat, it ended up pointing down way too far. But hey, at least I still had a bike seat, right? I continued on my way. At this point, it started raining pretty steadily. There were 22 miles to go.

At mile 44ish, I had another incident, because clearly the bike had not been eventful enough up until this point. A minivan stopped at a stop sign and then it proceeded on its way, all normal-like and in a predictable fashion. However, the genius on the bike in front of me decided to pass the minivan by going into the oncoming lane of traffic and then cutting back in front, which caused the poor minivan driver to stop short in surprise. Unfortunately, I was coming up behind the minivan at this point, and trying to perform an emergency stop was not going too well for me, because the roads were wet and we were on new pavement. In fact, stopping was only occurring with my bike skidding out sideways. This was not good. I managed to recover, but was still unable to stop, so I just yelled "GO GO GO!" at the minivan (I also yelled some bad words which I will leave out of my report). Now, the only thing that went right for me during the race happened at this point, because the driver started hauling down the road and I was safe. There was no way I would have been able to stop in time if the minivan hadn't started moving at that exact moment.

I am buying a new seat post! Quintana Roo, you should be ashamed of yourselves!

I also kind of wish I said something to that guy who cut off the minivan. If you're reading this, Red Jersey Man, take note: you are the reason people don't want triathlons going through their towns.

I ran out of transition with my helmet still on. Awesome, I am the triathlon dork of the race! The volunteer at the aid station told me, so I left my helmet with her and carried on.

Stop being such a dork.

OK, so after the crazy bike, I was a little shaken up. I also knew that there was no way to meet my race goal due to all the time I had lost on the bike. And my stomach issues from the morning were still going strong. Now, it's one thing to avoid *the last item from the Pepto Bismol jingle* while on the bike, but it's a whole other beast trying to avoid it on the run. Running hard was a recipe for disaster. The decision was made. I was going to run the half marathon as easy as possible.

I think this was a smart move because I just couldn't see the point in pushing too hard for my planned run pace, and possibly breaking myself (among other things) for what was going to be an otherwise unsuccessful race. I still feel that this was the right choice given the circumstances.

So... the run was pure fun. The rain was pouring down and we were all running through 6" deep puddles. The volunteers stuck around and there were even a few crazy spectators. Kudos to all those people, they were great!

Nothing

It was still pouring. Steve had packed up my transition stuff because he is awesome like that. Together we took our junk back to the car, ate some soggy pizza, and then tracked down my bike helmet.


A broken finger, ridiculous bike problems, and scary stomach issues! Oh, and I also need to run more when training for these things.


Great organization, great volunteers, and a very good venue in the town of Geneva. Their "go green" theme this year was a nice touch. This race was also a great value.

The swim needs some interim buoys, and the run course would have been SO MUCH better if they could have kept us off the sidewalks.