2003 Emerald Coast Tri #4 Race Report
Oct. 18th concluded my Tri season for 2003! That made five sprints for the year and my body is shot. I am mentally just drained from this year.
I raced a month ago and had the best race I had ever had. I swam the week following the race, but didn't run or bike because of conflicts in my schedule. One 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 Doctor four days later, he put me on a steroid dose pack and huge doses of antibiotics for seven days and told me that if I wanted to get better, I had to forfeit workouts for the next seven days and then, maybe I would be able to race. In the midst of all of this, I found out that I was going to be a father again and this wasn’t planned, but was not a bad thing, just a surprise. My wife and I were stressed with the news for about twenty-four hours, but then the joy of it all set in.
I followed the doctor’s 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 nine hours to be at the race so I couldn’t just not race.
Race morning came and I admit that I just wanted to quit before we started. On the nine hour drive, I had thoughts of not racing, but there was something deep down inside that just wouldn’t let me do it. 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. It reminded me of the first open water swim that I had ever tried. The ocean was very calm, but once you are on your way out, you can't see anything but water and why did I watch Shark Week on the Discovery Channel a few weeks before. The swells got me out of the rhythm of my stroke and I swallowed to much salt water and this made me a little sick—no a lot sick. By the grace of God I made it back to the beach and had not encountered any jellyfish. Somewhere in the middle of the swim, I gained a new respect for those who do the half IM and IM distances which are 1.2 miles and 2.4 miles respectively. The sand on the beach made the 50 to 100 yards to transition fun, I thought if I could just puke, I could take sand and cover it up, but I wasn’t lucky enough to be able to puke.
As sick as I was, I somehow found my bike in the transition area and got though transition one. I really didn’t feel that good and just the thought of taking a sip of Gatorade from my Aerodrink, made me want to gag. 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. I just had the worst mental attitude and was not even trying to talk myself out of these evil thoughts. I did pass several people on the bike and noticed several competitors that were a good ways behind me, so I felt that I probably was not having as bad of a race as I wanted to think.
The last couple of miles of the bike, I was able to get 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. In the last race, I had gotten in touch with the mental game on the run and I was just hoping that it would all come back to me. I just made myself start running from the transition area and was determined not to break side unless I just had to. I basically did it. I walked a total of about twenty-five yards and that was when I got water at the aid station on the way out and on the way back in. I was getting encouragement from many of the faster competitors and that goes along way with changing your mental state. I got a lot of high fives and words of encouragement from people who I didn’t know, but just as always, I was surrounded by a great group of people. I had gotten passed on the run by some people, but that was ok because I wanted to finish without walking as much on the run and at the turn around I was feeling pretty good. As I was on the way back in, I tried to make it my goal to not let anybody pass me, but realized that I needed to at least try to race smart and not blow up on the last half of the run. I really was not that familiar with the run course, so I was just a little up in the air on how far I had to go, but by the time I came to the aid station on the way in, I still was feeling pretty good. And then there she came, I had met her after I made the turn around and she had chased me down. Ok, I could stay with her, I felt pretty good! As I increased my pace, she increased her pace, and before long, I had increased my heart rate by ten beats a minute and was breathing a little harder. Now I don’t know if this lady could hear me breathing and thought that I was going to steamroll her or if she had the goal of just out running the big guy, but she never let me catch her. She crossed the finish line before me, but that was ok, she gritted it out and she deserved it.
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. There are people that can’t do even what I am able to do because of physical disabilities and when you think of it that way, no matter how bad of a race, that I thought I had, I got to race.