Stats  |  Links  | Photos  |  Narrative Stats Official Times: Swim - 35:26 (with helping current equal to about 1/2 mile) Transition 1 - 4:41 (Times are inside the transition pen- dealing with the pier and shoes and running to the transition area counts as swim time.) Bike - 59:29 (a little over 12 miles) Transition 2 - 3:40 Run - 50:19 (5K, 3.1 miles) Total - 2:33:33 Weight: 242 lbs. Photos Awaiting official photos. Links Event website and course map (10BM file, but it's a really cool overhead photo). Narrative Why a triathlon?  Another first time triathlete asked me this on the bus at 6AM and I couldn't remember the answer.  I blathered something about having lost a lot of weight, and watching Kona and crying.  I want to do ultra-running and I want to do an Ironman, but I didn't say that.  It all seemed to absurd when I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to finish this event.  And also I've been in a bit of an emotional upheaval the last couple of months and I just could not remember why I'm doing any of this.  Finishing this triathlon has been the best mental health care ever.  More on that later. Training.  A while before the San Francisco Half-Marathon I did a few spin classes and one bike ride (that convinced me that the spin classes were nothing like actual bike riding).  I swam one day a week all the way through training for San Francisco- I found that swimming didn't take much off my running training and the strengthen from swimming has eliminated the upper back pain and cramping I had during my first couple of half-maris.  The bike riding, however, seemed to just take away from running and I didn't feel like I had time for it.  Since San Francisco, I've gotten in about two 13 mile bike rides and two half-mile swims per week.  I ran about four 3 - 4 mile training runs total.  And I put on yet more weight. :-(  I never got around to doing a brick of any kind, or transition training.  There was only one place that I could find a plus-size tri suit, this one at junonia.com.  Because it is all black, I wore a reflective vest over it for the bike and the run. One notable training event was passing out on a bike ride three weeks before the event.  Hello, hypoglycemia!! (And some other stuff that makes me a bike-riding passer-outer.)  Usually I have a package of Sports Beans before exercise, that day I didn't- lesson learned. Books.  The two books I read that I found the most helpful were The Triathlete's Training Bible.  This is a really, really great book on training that I would suggest for any monosport athlete as well.  It's definately an essential on my bookshelf.  And then Slow, Fat Triathlete is fabulous motivation for a first-time triathlete, especially of the slow & fat variety. Taper.  Based on my experience with too long of a taper before San Francisco and the fact that my training was all sprint-distance, I did a one-week taper for this event. Race prep.  Got my race packet and went to the optional pre-race meeting.  I figured as a first-timer I had best not avoid the "optional".  It turned out I got one really important piece of information and the very most important thing was seeing what the set up.  The information was that the run from the end of the swim to the bike was almost a quarter mile on cement.  One had the option of leaving a pair of shoes at the edge of the water.  As a 100 pounds overweight runner, that was essential! Showed up nice and early on race morning.  My bike rack was the kind that you place the tire into a wooden slat.  My mountain bike tire wouldn't fit.  Ummmm... I asked a volunteer what I should do and he said to find an official.  Triathlons, unlike runs, have lots of rules.  And because they have lots of rules, they have officials in black and white striped shirts to enforce the rules.  I found an official who gave me dispensation to lean my bike against the transition area fence and made a note in her little book so I wouldn't get disqualified. Off to the buses to the swim start!  Sat at the swim start for two hours, met some nice women, tried to figure out where I was swimming.  So is the tide flowing left or right?  and then I swim toward the right?  No!  The left!! Breakfast, package of Sports Beans, Advil (read up on cautions about Advil before intense exercise- generally Tylenol is recommended instead.) Swim.  The air was 60-something and the water was 80 degrees, so finally getting in the water was a good deal!  The swim was point-to-point across an inland waterway, to a tall white building that was really really far away.  And there were islands in the way, yay!  The time limit gave me 45 minutes for each event and the swim, pushed along by the current, was supposed to feel like 1/2 mile.  I can do that in 30 minutes in the pool easily, so I went into this thinking that I was going to at least get a nice swim in a place I couldn't otherwise swim. A few minutes after starting the swim, all I wanted was the sense of satisfaction I would have if I could at least finish the swim.  Everything I had learned about swimming in a pool was useless swimming in a crowd in heavy chop.  I had learned to "get on top of the bouy" made by the lungs and use the spine to form a nice long body that is pulled along by the arms.  Now I was hugging the bouy and, with my upper body out of the water, swimming mainly with my legs.  That upright, it didn't even feel like the swimming I had learned- I was running in the water. After a few minutes of that I was completely out of breath and exhausted and realized that if I didn't find a way to make the swimming I had practiced work for me, I wasn't going to be able to finish.  But I was so out of breath that I couldn't even begin to swim normally.  So I did a slow backstroke until I had recovered a bit.  And the thing is, I wasn't really falling behind with the backstroke.  I wasn't falling behind at all.  In fact, I must say, there were some people out there that were really taking their lives in their hands.  There was one person swimming in circles.  I was struggling, but I wasn't doing that bad.  Before the end, I even passed a couple of people from the prior wave. I got going with my normal swim, although with the constant course adjustments to allow for the current (which never did go in exactly the same direction I was swimming) and the body position struggle in the chop, it was a whole body activity unlike any swimming I had ever practices.  My calves got sore, what were they doing?!?!  Remember those islands?  Each time I really figured out how to swim in a particular tide/wind/chop combo, it would change and I'd have to figure it out all over again. The end!!  What I thought would be the easiest thing for me turned out to be the thing I'm the most proud of.  If you have a good internet connection, that 10MB overhead photo of the swim route is something. Up the ladder on to the pier, up the no-skid pier ramp (ouch! ouch! ouch!) to my shoes and a package of caffeine Sports Beans I had tucked in the toe.  Run to the bike. Transition One.  Hey- it's really difficult to get socks and gloves on when you are soaking wet.  And sitting down in freshly mown grass adds a fabulous layer of grass clipping to the whole deal.  The whole deal including a layer of algae on my face that I only discovered when I looked in the mirror back at the hotel! Bike.  Away I went.  There was a really slow woman in front of me, but my heart rate was 180 so I decided that she might actually know more than me about surviving this thing and decided to stay behind her.  Later I passed her and a couple of other people.  I also did something really stupid that comes back to the right-left thing.  A volunteer told me to go left and for some reason I thought left was on my right.  I ended up in oncoming bike traffic and almost into oncoming vehicle traffic before the screaming volunteer was able to get me straightened out. I was tired.  Really, really tired.  More tired that I have ever been in a half-marathon.  What I would say is that this was about lack of experience on the bike.  I didn't know what tired meant- what could I do after I was tired?  Obviously I wasn't as tired as I thought I was, because when I got back to the draw bridge near the end I went up over the drawbridge in my highest gear, passing another woman that totally lost it when faced with the climb. Transition Two.  Get on my shoes and grab another caffeine Sports Beans.  The event was mainly over at this point and the transition area was full of people packing up and even family members and children that had come in (against the rules).  Volunteers hollered at people to get out of my way and I headed out on my run. Run.  Here is where experience is worth something- I can run three miles no matter what.  I was surely more tired than I had been on the bike, but I had more experience with how I felt and what I was capable of.  The run went back along where the swim had been, and I was pretty amazed I had actually swam across that!  Part of the run went on a long straight road, which can be a little emotionally discouraging.  A boy scout named Henry ran along with me.  Apparently he had been running it with stragglers all morning. Why?  Because he's a boy scout!  At the very end of the run a scouting Mom ran with me through the last few turns to the finish line.  I finished just as everyone was gathered at the finish line for the awards ceremony, so it was quite the welcome!!!  I waited to welcome the one woman I knew was behind me- she was from Maryland and had her husband and family there as a cheering squad.  As I was packing up my things, one more woman finished. Accomplishment!  I think my disappointment in my performance in the San Francisco Half Marathon had affected me more than I thought.  I haven't done something that has given me a real sense of accomplishment in a very long time, and it was making me forget even what my goals are.  I really hope this will revitalize my sense of what I can accomplish and where I am going.  I need a little boost.