"Do you need some help, ma'am?"

Well today was the day. The US Women's Triathlon Series: Naperville, sprint triathlon.
The morning started at 0230 because I have to be dramatically early in order to avoid/have enough time cushion any potential panic-causing situation (getting lost, unexpected disaster, etc.). So I woke up and my first thought was "VETO." I'm on the night shift right now, so my affinity to waking up early has decreased significantly. Fortunately, I had prepacked my bag so only had a few things to do before my departure (0315-0330). I ended up renting a car. After weighing all my options, this seemed like it would bring the least amount of stress and chaos come race day, so I bit the bullet and just did it. Lesson learned: don't sign up for races outside the reach of public transportation. I signed up for the smallest car available, but somehow ended up with a PT Cruiser. My apologies if this is the vehicle you own, but I think it is perhaps the ugliest automobile in all of Creation. Ugly or not, it worked, and that's really all I cared about. So I loaded my fantastically speedy steed into the back, filled my water bottles, and was off. Transition opened at 0500, so I wanted to get there at 0430 (it's a problem... needing to be early). Only at 0346 in the morning can you snap photographs WHILST driving down Lakeshore Drive. The beauty of my ealry morning trek to Naperville: traffic was not an issue whatsoever. I only had to turn around twice (the first time shouldn't count, it was me being stupid like a half mile from my apartment...and neither time was a dramatic loss), so I arrived by 0435. Still plenty of time to ease into it all. I unloaded The Ugly Cruiser and then realized I had no idea how to get to transition from parking. I remembered the website saying 'allow 15 minutes to get from the parking lot to transition' but never thought to look up how to get from A to B. Being that I was heinously early, there were very few people around, so my usual fall back plan of 'follow the crowd' failed. I spotted a woman walking through the parking lot and asked her, and she said 'good question! I think it's this way.' So I walked with her (don't worry, she was very mom-ish and not threatening) and we eventually found where we needed to be.

My big problem with races, I think, is having to use the bathroom ALL THE TIME. 'They' say you should hydrate like crazy, which is all well and good, but shoot, when I have to urinate every 20 minutes because of it, it really becomes a problem! So I stopped by the port-a-potties before setting up my transition spot. It was definitely one of four encounters with the bacteria filled fecal bins. Ick. I set up my spot. By this time it was 0515. A little over three hours until I would start the race and I was ready then. Gooo figure. I saw a bike maintenance tent not too far so I decided to get my tires pumped up. I would do it myself with my little hand pump, but the tires on my fancy pants bike are apparently so crazy high pressure or something that I couldn't dream of achieving it with the hand pump (I learned this at the maintenance class..), so a floor pump is necessary. I walked over to the tent and was the only one there so they did it for me! Yes please, Strong Man, pump my tires. I KNOW I would have looked like quite the tool doing it myself. One of the guys said 'NICE BIKE!' and I looked behind me to see who he was talking to. Then I realized it was me! No one has EVER complimented me on my bike before. This was an exciting first. I returned to my spot and my co-worker called to tell me she'd arrived and was on her way to transition. When she got there, we set her stuff up and then 'walked transition.' Then it was like 0545... So we obsessed over how crazy we were for not training appropriately and how terrible we were going to do blah blah blah, then decided to just go out to the starting area.
The swim took place in a crazy body of water. It's not a pool, but was very pool-like. There were walls with markings of how deep the water was, there were lane lines... the bottom was smooth sand... but it wasn't chlorinated. Comparatively to Lake Michigan this was wonderful. I was in Wave 26 out of 30. Wave 1 started at 0700, and another wave left every four minutes. So I went right around 0840ish. The swim was something else. It was a 'snake-like' course, so we went down the 'non-pool' around a buoy and back to the shore to round another buoy, down and back down and back three times. The swim start is something that will always terrify and conquer me. We started standing about thigh deep in the water, so the majority of my 75 person wave was like running in the water until it was like chest deep. It's so much more efficient to SWIM even if you can touch, so I took a few steps and then flopped on my stomach and tried to swim. Unfortunately my logic couldn't overcome my 74 wave-mates and their 'running' foiled my swimming. ...All this is to say that the swim start was uglier than I anticipated, I could feel myself getting panicky and wheezy and not exhaling. Oddly, I am glad I've experienced that before because I knew how to handle it and knew that it would pass once I could get past the wacko's out there. It did thin out a little, but people still got in my way. Regardless, I finished the swim after swallowing a lot of air and cursing at a lot of people. And peeing in the water. Couldn't help it.
On toward the bike. Ahh the bike. First of all getting my silly wetsuit off was quite the chore. It got caught on my darn timing chip so I was hopping around like a goon and an old man that was 'monitoring transition' said "Do you need some help ma'am?" I muttered something about being clumsy and said thanks anyways and finally wriggled out of that thing. I strapped on my fancy bike shoes clipped my helmet and lifted my bike off the rack-- one handed, it's sooo light. I got up on my throne and had quite an interesting time clipping my shoes in, but once I did it was magic. I got passed twice on the bike, but passed MANY people. Oh it was glorious. I thought back to Chicago last year and remembered watching people on fancy bikes fly by me on rickety old IH (RIP..) ... it felt good to be the passER, not the passEE. The bike leg consisted of two laps of a loop they created. Pretty uneventful. Towards the end of the second lap I saw an ambulance, fire truck, and cop car at a minor intersection. I thought it was kind of overkill for that particular point-- they didn't need THAT many people directing traffic, then I saw a motorcycle in SHAMBLES on the side of the road. There had been an accident! I asked a cop if the driver was okay as I went by (had to slow down...) and he said 'they should be fine.' Scary stuff. So the bike was done. I hate dismounting....and I hate the way my legs feel for the first mile to mile and a half off the bike. I fumbled to get my running shoes on, took a swig of gatorade, clipped my number on and took off. More like tropmed along. My legs were HEAVY. I could lift them up a little, and they'd fall victim to gravity IMMEDIATELY. Thud thud thud. I felt like I had more vertical movement than forward movement. Thud thud thud. People passing on my left and right. Thud thud thud. By the time I saw the Mile 1 Marker I thought I was closer to 2 miles in and exclaimed "MILE ONE-- ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" A girl next to me looked over and glared. I let her pass. Thud thud thud. A few minutes later I felt my legs coming back. Praise the lord. By no means was I going quickly or at an anywhere near decent pace, but I was getting better. By mile two I felt confident that I'd finish without keeling over. There's a water station about a quarter mile from the finish (weird placement in my opinion), but from that point on people cheering would say 'ALMOST DONE!' or 'TWO MORE BLOCKS!' This would be helpful if it were accurate. When I heard 'two more blocks,' I 'kicked it in' but it was actually more like 0.2miles... Which isn't far, given, but it is farther than you want the last sprint (hahaha sprint is really a STRONG word) of the race to be... Anyways. I finished just seconds behind my coworker (she was in Wave 24) and it was good.

All in all:
-People irritate me. They get in my way. I'd like to see what my time would be if I were the only one on the course. I won't deny the dynamic that is brought by the competition and other race participants, but they got in my way a LOT, especially in the swim and bike.
-My goal was to finish in less than one hour and thirty minutes (the Olympic Distance last year took me 3hrs and 1 minute (two LOUSY minutes over my goal for THAT race) so I figured this race was half the distance of that one, so it should take me less than half the time...). I looked at my watch and it said I'd done it in 1hr and 22 minutes-- I was elated! I actually felt good about the race that I was dreading because my preparation was essentially non existent. When I got home, I checked the official results and they say 1hr and 27 minutes which is upsetting-- 5 minutes is huge. I don't know how the discrepancy came about, but I will be happy that I was still under 1hr30min.
-I have a lot of work to do before August, and I still don't know how I'm going to do it better this time. I need to really focus on running (obviously) and running off the bike. That is what killed me last year and I refuse to make the same mistake twice.
-It went better than I anticipated, but I can't deny the insane amount of room for improvement.

Official Results:

Overall place: 113 out of 1709
Division place: 11 out of 57
Gender place: 110 out of 1709
Time: 1:27:09
Swim: 11:55
Trans 1: 3:30 (stupid wetsuit!!!)
Bike: 42:36
Trans 2: 2:56
Run: 26:14

I came home and played soccer which was probably somewhat masochistic, but I miss that game so much, I couldn't turn down the rare opportunity to play in an organized game. It's crazy how much my muscles have changed after not playing for a year and a half. I was never the most agile individual, but now any exercise I do is moving forward; very little-- if ANY-- is side to side or 'bursts of speed' (honestly I chuckle.. speed was my Achilles heel...). Trying to sprint back to goal or make the run for a breakaway or change direction on a dime today was ...awful, but it was a lot of fun to just be out there.

I could write more, but I get irritated when people are too wordy and this is already far too wordy.