One of the benefits of having family that lives within 15 minutes from the race start is that you actually get there on time.

This is the first year of the Renaissance Man Triathlon. I’ve never been in a first race before. Even if you had, how would you know what to expect? This one was all handled very well. Parking was within a few hundred yards of the race start, so you didn’t have to carry your things far. Already things are going well. I’ve marched a half mile to a starting line before …

The turnout was strong. They said there was somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 racers, and most from out of town. Being the first race in the city, this is not surprising. But here we are, a race I just found while surfing the web one night, in my second Olympic distance triathlon. The swim is just under one mile. The bike ride is 25.36 miles. The run is 6.1 miles. The full race measured 32 miles, or 51.5 km.

Here’s one portion of the transition area:

The swim was in the Tennessee River. We actually got set up early enough to do a bit of swimming before the race. The water was warm and calm, much like a lake, except just upstream is the historic Wilson Dam. The start of the race was with a self-seeded time trial start. You estimate your swim time and they put people in that order. The idea being that fast people aren’t surrounded by slow people, and vice versa. We all went in one-by-one.

I’m terrible at the swim. Have I mentioned that?

I was not the last person out of the water, at least. There may have been six whole people behind me. I am bad at the swim.

I rode part of the bike route during the week, leaving out the first few miles because they held the two most prominent hills. My pace today was a little bit slower than the practice run, because of those hills and being gassed from the swim.

But, hey, I put on my shoes like real triathletes do. You put the bike on the rack with the shoes already in the pedals. You run the bike out of the transition area to the line where the race officials let you actually mount the thing. You pedal away barefoot, with your feet on top of your shoes until you can get them worked inside and the shoes tightened up.

You aren’t supposed to try new things on race day for a host of reasons, but I figured it would work or it would be obvious that it wouldn’t work, and I could just pull over. But it worked and I pedaled away.

I passed several people on the bike course. No one was strong enough to hang on to my wheel. (The real riders having been long gone already, because they are swimmers, too.) I realized on a day like today two water bottles wasn’t enough. Others realized this too.

Back into the transition area just as some people were heading in to finish their race. That’s not demoralizing at all.

So I do all the cool bike things: I take off my gloves while I’m still riding, worked my way out of the velcro in my shoes and pedaled the last bit on top of my shoes. I stopped, dismounted and had a boring and too-long transition into the run.

And then I ran. The first half mile was flat, and then there was an actual hill. And every volunteer you passed said “The first water station is just around the corner!”

You hear things like that a lot. We discussed it as we ran, the wonderful and helpful volunteers (who are wonderful and helpful) at these races are always pathological liars. “Almost there,” means nothing to these people. “You’re doing great,” is an obvious one. The ones you’d like to be true, though, on a sunny July day in Alabama especially, are “Here’s the water” and “The rest of the route is full of shade! And downhill!”

The run goes through downtown Florence, the University of North Alabama campus and one of the nice older neighborhoods in the area. It is scenic. And hot, and almost devoid of shade.

On the first part of the run I went through one intersection and the first car there, waiting for the police officer to tell her there were no more slow runners in her way, was my mom. She came down to see the finish, still five miles away.

The last mile of that run is perfectly flat and, during the time of day I did it, in total sun. If I were faster there could be shade. I got passed in the run by three or four people, and I picked up six or seven people on the way, too. The last one I got at the very end, a lady who’d had enough, but I talked her into finishing with a run, which was awesome to see.

And there, at the finish line, with the local DJ calling out racers’ names, and the big sign overhead and my wife off to one side taking pictures as she’d finished long ago and my mom shooting video, I made it in. There was a woman with a water bottle. Another person took off the timing chip. Someone came up and adjusted my runner’s bib for some reason.

We discussed how they’d lied about the shade. And then someone mentioned they had ice baths.

Every race should adopt the ice baths. They were just two kiddie pools, all of the ice had of course melted by the time I got back, but the water was still amazingly cold.

The race was fun, but the finish was better.

The Yankee finished in second place in her division. I finished fifth in my race. I now have two Olympic-distance triathlons under my belt.

I do not know what is happening.