Don't Worry...Be Happy

When I was about 10 years old, I heard my mother tell a friend of hers, "Oldest Daughter is the athletic one."

As the middle daughter, I've spent the rest of my life trying to prove her wrong. Okay, so it took me two years to get out of the beginner's group in swim lessons and I never did pass advanced swimmers, and Big Sis was indeed bigger and stronger than me -- she actually made it through advanced life saving and worked as a life guard and swim instructor. And she could beat up the boys who picked on me -- that was handy. She actually made one cry once. Score. Even though I felt a little sorry for him.

But still. To be pigeon-holed as "not athletic." That kind of irked me.

Which is probably how I ended up standing nearly hip deep in Oneida Lake in upstate New York on a chilly Sunday morning in early August waiting for the horn to signal the start of my 600 meter swim, followed by a 30 kilometer bike ride, followed by a five kilometer run. I'm not the praying type, but I actually pulled out a prayer. "Lord, please get me through this swim. Please be with me on the bike. Please bring me back home."

I had spent the previous three weeks fretting almost non-stop about this race. To the point of having nightmares. In one it was a relay and I forgot the baton before starting out on my swim. The idea of having a baton for a swim relay may seem ridiculous, but it was in a ziploc plastic bag, I want you to know. In another, the running part took place through a school building and I didn't know the route and, being last and way behind everyone else, didn't know which way to go.

What about a tri is there to worry about? Let me count the ways:

• The swim. There are a zillion things to worry about with the swim, but the first thing is just the swim itself. Particularly when it took one two years to make it out of beginners. 
• What will I do to injure myself during the training process? Can I get through it without re-injuring my knees/feet/back?
• Cramping feet in the swim.
• Cold water.
• Not having a wet suit. 
• Getting kicked in the head.
• Goggles filling up with water.
• Being too nervous the night before and spending the night getting up every hour to pee out all the hydrating one has carefully done. 
• Zebra mussels -- who knew that was going to be a problem?
• Seaweed. To the point of it not being swimming so much as propelling oneself through the seaweed forest.
• A 30-minute cut-off time for the swim. 
• A four-days before my race fall on my butt. Which was going to need to be glued to a bike saddle for eighteen miles in four days. Ouch.
• An eighteen mile bike ride. Kind of stretches the limits of "sprint" in my way of thinking. 
• Hybrid bike as opposed to a nice lightweight narrow tires/less wind resistance road or tri bike. 
• Hearing people complain about having trouble breaking 15 mph on their training rides. When I'm having trouble breaking 11.5 mph. 
• How many of the 1400 women in the race will pass me on the bike leg? I'm betting 1000 minimum. And I'm in wave number two out of eleven waves.
• Railroad tracks that need to be crossed going out and coming back. And tales of people slipping and crashing on them. 
• And a train -- a train! -- that comes through every Sunday at 8 a.m. -- just about the time I'll be hitting the tracks if I have a good swim and do better on the bike than I have been doing.
• The steel deck bridge. Seriously, these things still exist and they're sending a bike race over one? 
• But wait --  it gets better! The forecast is for rain on race day. It seems that a wet steel deck bridge could get slippery when wet. Please let the forecast be wrong.  
• Tanking in the last two miles of the bike ride. Which I've done in my two practice rides. 
• Cramping feet on the bike ride. 
• Having to pee on the bike ride and no porta potties on the route.
• Having a flat tire incident.
• The two-hour cut-off time. Which seems like it should be easy, but factor in potential crashes, trains, flat tires, and slippery bridges and it starts sounding a bit daunting.
• Cars, dogs, deer, mice, wooly bears, baby turtles, and other things that either run out in front of you or run into you.
• The bike path back into the transition area  -- narrow and W-shaped. As in two ruts with a mound between them.   Tricky if coming in with a pack.
• Having someone crash in front of me trying to get out of her clipless pedals back at transition to the run. It happened to someone last year. Her daughter has a photo of her bike flying up in the air as she collided with the crashed bike in front of her.
• Race day forgetting of helmet, bike gloves, wave swim cap, goggles, camel bak for the bike ride, epipen, epipen pouch, race belt, race number, helmet number, sneakers, socks, gu, anti-zebra mussel swim booties, bike/run shirt. I'm sure I've forgotten something that needs to be remembered. At least in my dream I remembered the ziploc bag for the swim baton. Sigh.
• What to wear -- race day weather forecast changes every two minutes. Will I get hypothermia riding the bike in 63 degree temps in the rain? I have no cycling jacket. 
• Not oversleeping the 4:30 a.m. wakeup time. 
• Getting to transition with plenty of time to set up, eat, and pee without feeling rushed. 
• Will we get to the race site before the parking lot fills up and they send us out to the Speedway to be bused in?
• Every time the race site posts an update, my heart starts pounding. Reading the race day information booklet completely freaked me out for days. As in "This is real. Huge YIKES."
• Every time I check in on the club triathlon page, someone else has posted something else for me to worry about. 
• Will I be dead last? That's okay, that's okay, I'll be lapping everyone who is still sleeping. But still. 
• Have I bitten off more than I can chew? 
• Will I make it out alive? Just a few weeks ago a couple of hours away someone was killed in the cycling leg of the triathlon, and someone else critically injured. I have a seven-year-old. What am I doing?
• The run. Will I have any run left in my legs after the 18-mile bike ride?

So there I was, standing hip deep in Oneida Lake, waiting for the starting horn and trying to convince myself that this was going to be fun. 

Stay tuned....

"Lord, please get me through this swim."