sad to say, i am officially a tri-geek now, having officially finished a triathlon.  no jeers or jokes, please; i've gotten enough from my boyfriend.  :)

i've been training for this race since february, but by the time it actually rolled around, i realised i didn't know WTF i was doing.
wetsuit?  transition?  and you get penalized or DQ'd for drafting?  it's taken me 10+ years to perfect wheel-sucking!!

anyway, by the end of last week, i was FREAKED OUT about this race, doing all manner of stupid shit because my mind was occupied worry worry worrying about the race instead of the car in front of me, or what day it was, or which ATM card i was using.  this was way worse than even the liberty classic pre-race jitters.  fortunately, the only damage i inflicted on the world were a couple near misses on polly drummond road and freezing my checking account for 24 hours.  tri-vet sharon caffrey did
a wonderful job of talking me down from the ledge, and in particular assuring me that i _didn't_ need to pull on arm warmers, a  long-sleeve jersey, jacket and skullcap after the swim and before the bike  leg.  the first, and only other, triathlon i'd done back in may ended most  ignominiously when i DNF'd after getting hypothermia on the bike leg, on a cold, rainy miserable day in new jersey.

eagleman is a Big Deal; it's the national long-course tri championship, and a qualifier for the Even Bigger Deal:  worlds in hawaii.

race day started at 5am (is this what it's like being a cat 5 guy?) cos you gotta get body-marked, rack your bike, set up your cycling and running stuff for a quick transition and visit the port-a-looz a billion times.

in fact, that's what i'm doing, yacking with juan and sue in the poo line, when i realise that my swim wave is going off in less than a minute.  i dash to the beach while simultaneously trying to muscle up my wetsuit and pull on my swim cap & goggles.  i miss the timing mat on my first dash, and would have been DQ'd if the officials hadn't hollered at me to come back and properly pass over it.  meanwhile, my wave has just started, 50 yards out in the corral, and i get a nice warm-up catching them.

the swim is actually fun, cos i don't work too hard; the salt water and wetsuit make swimming relatively effortless compared to swimming in a pool.  i do NOT get stung by the reported sea nettles, which is a good thing cos one chick in my wave got stung 5 times and if i'd gotten stung 5 times i'd have come out of the water all swelled up and round and red.  i might have popped my wetsuit.  i also avoid getting kicked in the head, and nobody knocks my goggles off, and i'm not last, so my swim was a
great success.

i find my bike amongst the other 1500, and then commence my hoppy, st. vitus-like dance that gets my wetsuit off.  though i fear i might, i do not topple over the entire rack of 20+ bikes while pulling mine down.   i spend an eternity in T1, having a good pee and briefly freaking out about having left my helmet in the car before i remember i've hung it on my bars.

the bike is actually fun, cos i don't work too hard here, either.  the course is flatter than flat, and i try to keep my speed pegged at 21.  i'm a little worried about how my gore-tex leg will do all squinchied up in an aero position for 56 miles because i'm not at all used to riding flats.  i also consider the possibility that i might have a mental wobbler during this leg, all alone with nothing to concentrate on but my front hub and whatever song's looping in my head:  "the littlest worm," "red river valley," or, even worse, eminem's latest.  but the ride is not boring at all!  there are the riders who veer into you as you pass them; there are
packs of 6-10 riders that roar by, seriously challenging the no drafting rule; and best of all, there are the feed zones every 10 miles!  the feed zones are scenes of utter chaos, what with people chucking their empty bottles into the road, dropping their handoffs, and swerving every which way.  i'm sure the better triathletes are excellent bike handlers, but my equals pretty much sucked.  and the number of gels, full and empty, that littered the road was disgraceful.  there were a number of bad crashes
out on the bike course, which didn't surprise me at all.

back to the transition zone for the last time.  only 13.1 miles between me and the finish.

the run is actually not at all fun.  in fact, it is probably the most excruciating race i've done, with the exception of the baltimore marathon.  in fact, the only way i _don't_ stop to cry, collapse, vomit or all three is by telling myself that if i can do a marathon where the last 15 miles are sheer pain, i can run 13.1 miles of the same.  the run is also flatter than flat, baking you in full sun, and it's out and back, so as you're beginning your torture, others from earlier waves are finishing and life seems very unfair.  the saving grace is that there're water, ice and gatorade support stations at every mile, so the race, for me at least, becomes a matter of soldiering on to the next water stop.

this run leg, as they so eloquently say, is worse than suck, but my time is only about 10 minutes off my best half-marathon time.  in fact, i expected to finish the entire half-ironman in about 6 hours, when i have finished in just over 5, and that is pretty cool.  i'm 19th out of 83 in my age group.

thanks to the guys at henry's bike shop for tuning up and once-overing my bike so it passed race inspection. thanks to christiana care physical therapy plus, and their awesome massage therapists who, after an afternoon appt today, may have me walking down steps frontwards, instead of backwards, again.

kris