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Here’s what I did this month. The red is on the bike, as you can see. The dark blue is obviously running and the light blue is in the pool. The purple is one night of walking around New Orleans. It felt like we walked a lot, so I mapped it and, what do you know: we’d walked a lot. The sport line near the end of the month is from my lake swim.
It doesn’t seem like enough, somehow.
I do not know what is happening.
Today I swam 1,500 meters, rode 40 kilometers and ran 10K. This was my first Olympic distance triathlon. I finished it.
The Yankee gave an excellent list of post-race thoughts on her experience on Twitter …
Some race musings: wetsuits really DO give you and advantage, and are kind of awesome. #aquabike
— Lauren Smith (@LaurnSmith) April 27, 2014
So I thought I’d give it a try as well. Here they are for the site, with a bit more elaboration.
First of all, here’s the finish line. My beautiful wife took this picture just before I crossed it. You’ll notice the crowds have gone. You can imagine why.
In the lake thoughts: “Can’t breathe. Don’t drown. Why can’t I swim? Don’t drown.”
We rented wet suits. This race was still wetsuit legal because we have had exactly one week of spring and the water just hasn’t warmed up much yet. We’d intended to go to an open-water swim practice last week, but the morning that was held the weather was chilly to cold and getting in water didn’t seem all that appealing. Today, in her aquabike and my triathlon, we tried them out for the first time. She really liked hers. Mine, it turns out, tended to constrict my breathing. I’m not the best race swimmer in the world anyway and I’m almost always in a beautiful, clear-bottomed pool. Put that, brown lake water and a new breathing experience together … well, I wasn’t the last one out of the water. But it was close.
I had a nice chat with one of the lifeguards who was paddling along as I worked my way to the end of the swim, though.
Here’s the swim route. Nine buoys, 1,500 meters, a big loop:
On-the-bike thoughts: “I am the best bad rider out here!”
All the serious cyclists were far ahead. I swept up a lot of people who struggle in the cycling portion of the race. No one passed me, so I found myself making up some ground, in a virtual way. I always cheer on others I pass who are working hard. We all need it from time to time.
This route, which features about 1,000 feet of climbing, starts at the star at the bottom left of the map below, goes up and to the right near the airport and then sprints back down to the water. You come back up from that park and then turn right to head home. As I was heading toward that park The Yankee was coming to the turning point to head back to the start/finish. (She’s a much better race swimmer and had an early time trial start time.) We waved. I thought I might be able to catch her. Nope. She was moving.
Running thoughts: “I still have to run!? … Why did it take three miles for my calves to unclinch? … Those two ladies cheated!”
No one passed me except for the woman who admitted to taking a short cut and the other one who might have also shorted herself at the turnaround. She would have caught me anyway.
Look closely at the run route. We ran from Georgia into Alabama. And back:
Olympic tri finish line thoughts: “Go strong … Don’t look at the clock. Smile! Where is the water? Give me all of the water!”
Being happy at the finish is important. This was my first Olympic-distance triathlon and I’m not really in the shape I want to be in for them. My swim was bad, my bike was OK and my run left a good deal to be desired. The ride, which will always be my favorite part, was weird. I’d been telling myself for days that I wouldn’t save anything after the ride because the run was so flat. Who needs legs for that? And then my swim was so bad I spent the rest of the race wondering if I should conserve my legs for the run or just go. I never did resolve that issue, and I think it showed in both the bike and the run as far as energy levels and how my legs felt.
But! I was outside, doing something fun, enjoying a beautiful day and trying to be healthy. I don’t even feel miserable at the end. I feel surprisingly good, and that’s not just the endorphines talking.
I do not know what is happening.
We found a training routine last year that says on race day you get to bask in the achievement. We read “bask” to mean ice cream. And so it has been that we’ve probably had the worst food day of the year. But I found a website that told me how many calories I burned and, suddenly, that became the most official site on the Internet, because it says I burned a lot of calories.
Goals for the day: Don’t drown. Check. Don’t get swept up in the water (they have a time limit on the swim). Check. Don’t have any mechanical problems on the bike. Check. Finish. Check. Don’t be last. Check.
The Yankee, meanwhile, finished second in the women’s division of the aquabike – a swim/ride race of the same distances I did today. She finished third overall. Because she is awesome.
And now I’m an Olympic-distance triathlon survivor. Coming up next is a sprint triathlon, which is considerably shorter, but no less fun.
Catching up is always a Sunday afternoon post. Tomorrow’s plans are different, though, and I have to get rid of these pictures somehow. So follow along with me now …
First, a study in Chick-fil-A bovines … This guy may just barely fit under the name Bos primigenius.
This one, meanwhile, is much larger, and of course fits the mental image Chick-fil-A has given us of barely literate dairy cattle advocating that you should really leave their kind alone and, instead, enjoy delicious poultry products. This one will have some explaining to do when all the other Holsteins realize that’s a leather glove.
In stop and go traffic, more stop than go, I ran across this piece of heavy machinery. I think it might actually be a transformer. See the guy on the left? He struck a pose for me. I did not take a picture of that.
I finally got a halfway decent shot of the bridge with no road in it. I can now move on:
This machine makes bacon, and has no qualms about shooting it into your eyes. Bring your own safety glasses:
Today I did a little 7.75 mile ride and just under a mile of jogging as a brick. All it did was convince me that I’m kidding myself about my training. Tomorrow, we’ll prove it!
I so rarely see cyclists on the road. They’re almost always, always going the other direction. And, without fail, I am struggling up some tiny incline when they go by. They’ll just be breezing along happily and I’m obviously struggling to turn over the pedals. It is uncanny.
I think I’ve passed maybe four or five cyclists on the road in a casual day’s ride because they are always going the other way. But I saw this guy, and that was pretty great:
Right through this area, recently, my CatEye said I touched 40.5 miles per hour. I can be a little faster through here, I know:
Around midday, on a cool, overcast, windy, rainy day, a spring day that featured a public football practice, thousands of people were crawling over campus. And this was hours before the actual festivities. Auburn folks are ready for some football:
We went to the baseball doubleheader instead. In the first game we listened to the crowd and the audio from the big screen. We could hear a tailgating band and the marching band each vying for attention. It was a wonderful day to be on campus with friends, a group which keeps growing each time we get together.
This guy’s been in the group for a long while. He was born just after the Georgia game two years ago. (His mom was at the tailgate right at her due date. Where were you?) He’s a cool dude:
A year ago, now, some of us were listening to scanners in Boston again. This is what we heard:
I loved that one call: “America.”
Took this while I was panting and wheezing and considering the alternative hobbies life might enjoy. I’d just gotten off my bike, the first exercise I’d had in a week since I couldn’t shake my illness and the first time I’d been on the bike for two weeks for other shameful reasons.
I’d decided late this evening that the weather was nice. It was a beautiful day. And I allowed myself to ignore my coughs and listening as I rationalized how I felt so much better, really. And I did, on the sofa, or in a chair or on the bed. I even felt good pedaling off my little neighborhood street, and then over the freeway and through the old neighborhood and all of that was fine. Right up until the first little hill, where I realized I couldn’t take any breath into my lungs.
It felt a lot like pneumonia, but without the pain, so at least there is that.
My route was going to be a simple one. A few weeks ago I saw a guy riding up the ramps of one of the parking decks and I thought That’d be fun. So I laid out a little route to get two of the parking decks. I figured this would be about six miles all told, just enough to stretch my legs and get the parking decks off my mind.
So I did the one and then the other and I thought, There are those other three parking decks … so then I had to do those. Four of them were great fun. The fifth one, the oldest one, was a bit narrow and sketchy. It has a nice view of … rooftops, though. So I sat up there and had a banana and smelled the smell of the barbecue coming from next door and looked out over the air conditioning units and satellite receivers of downtown and feeling a little like Batman, which is to say self-conscious in spandex.
About that time The Yankee texted me that she was going for a ride, so I descended the parking deck, got back on the road and had a woman almost pick a fight with me because she doesn’t understand traffic laws or how she almost hit me. She had her window down, so she heard my reaction to all of this. Anyway, I went back through another old neighborhood, by one of the city parks and up a little hill where I met the local riding group coming from the other direction. So I felt the need to make a good showing for them, standing up out of the saddle and smiling when I really wanted to be panting and moving listlessly. My legs felt OK, but it seems my lungs aren’t as over being sick as I’d like them to be.
Down another two hills and then onto the back of the local time trial route. On one end I passed my beautiful bride smiling and riding the other direction, “I know you!” she said.
So I turned around to follow her, but she was off like a rocket. Took me forever to catch her, and that was just before she got back home. Somehow my two parking deck, six-mile-or-so adventure turned into a nice 20 mile meandering course. Watching the sunset I wasn’t sure how I felt about any of it. I told her that I regretted the ride, which seemed the wrong thing to say after a bit. I’ve only regretted one ride, and that was just the abrupt and unexpected end of that particular ride, really. I didn’t regret today’s ride, just how I felt on it, and that it had been two weeks since I’d been in the saddle.
Hate when that happens.
