Last one of the Year!

Oct. 18th concluded my Tri season for 2003! That made 5 sprints for the year and my body is shot.

I raced a month ago and had the best race I had ever had. Swam the week following the race, but didn't run or bike because of conflicts in my schedule. 1 week after the race, I got sick with a sinus infection and thought that it would go away and it didn't. By the time I went to the Dr. 4 days later, he put me on a steroid dose pack and huge doses of antibiotics for 7 days and told me that if I wanted to get better, I had to forfeit workouts for the next 7 days and then maybe I would be able to race.

I followed his advice and I ended up going to the race with basically no training for the race. My coach told me to go race and have a good time, but I was uneasy about the race and to make it worse, my family and my wife's family had traveled with us for 9 hours to be at the race.

Race morning came and I admit that I just wanted to quit before we started. This would be my first ocean swim and I was scared to death. To make things worse, the jellyfish were so bad that they had volunteers posted at the exit of the swim with gallons of vinegar to poor on you if you were one of the unfortunate ones. Five minutes before the swim, the buoys for the swim were still sitting on the beach, but then the life guard grabs them and takes off on a jet ski. I have done enough open water swims to know the approximate distances from the start. But the buoys ended up a lot further than they should have. Even though everybody has to swim the distance, I signed up for this tri because the swim was only 1/3 of a mile and now it was looking close to at least a half mile. This was a mass start and we were off with the sound of a siren. I was panicky the entire swim. The ocean was very calm, but once you are on your way out, you can't see anything but water and the swells got me out of the rhythm of my stroke and I swallowed to much water and this made me a little sick. By the grace of God I made it back to the beach and had not encountered any jellyfish.

The bike had a 10-15mph cross wind on the out and back course and this was just as good as riding a head wind the whole time, but I made it. By the time, I made it to the turn around, I was praying for a flat so I would have a reason to quit, but that didn't happen and I made it back in.

The last couple of miles of the bike, I had gotten my mental game back together and just decided that on the run, I needed to try and not break stride the entire time if it was possible. I basically did it. I walked a total of about 25 yds and that was when I got water at the aid station on the way out and on the way back in. I by no means came near finishing last and mentally, I learned a lot.

For not training and having a poor attitude going into the race, I guess I was lucky to finish. I learned a lot more about myself and I learned a lot about how fortunate that I am to be a part of such a great sport.

Well it is time to put the finishing touches on my article for this month so this is an abbreviated race report. I will follow later this week with a more detailed race report on my website. If you want to hear about all of the mind games and details you can go there.

Still Tri'n
Michael