Long-winded account of Triathlon - Take One

It’s now two full weeks since the triathlon, and many people have probably erroneously concluded from my conspicuous silence that I died during the event. Rest assured, I am very much in one piece and, even better, have returned with a story to tell. So I figured in exchange for all of your pecuniary support, I should offer up my humble tale …
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The night before the flight to Florida, I had been up late at the office wrapping up some final Project Warrior items with Dan “Schneider” Bergman, and returned home around 1AM to pack. St. Anthony’s triathlon weekend was to begin very early Friday morning with a 4:45 AM wakeup to catch a 7:20AM flight, so I had much to do with little promise of sleep. The hypochondriac in me was alive and well, and I was very focused on the slight soreness that was growing in my throat. I worried that another night of little sleep followed by three hours of re-circulated airplane air were not the ingredients for a championship performance. Fear of sickness induced non-performance and the concomitant friend, family and colleague ridicule ruled the day, or at least the blur that was that morning. Fortunately for me, I had of course naively underestimated the magical attributes of the Florida sun, and the thought of illness immediately dissipated upon arrival to Tampa, melted away by the sweet, sweet heat. (God I hate New York climate)

We landed at Tampa Int’l Airport and a group of us caught a ride in Paul van Hook’s snazzy Hyundai Sonata rental to the St. Petersburg Hilton hotel located around 21 miles away on the West coast of Florida. All of us were hungry at this point, and as we neared the hotel, we began looking for some food. I personally had my heart set on some Taco Bell (perfect endurance-based sport eats), and I somehow persuaded my compatriots to go along with the Tex-Mex game plan. Paul suggested that we go to Cha Cha Cabanas which had what he described as “decent” Mexican food. The restaurant was located at the end of the beautiful pier that we would be swimming along for the race so we all bought into the idea. Most importantly it was close, because our hunger was very real and very now. One hour later, after eating one of the worst meals not accompanied by food poisoning I have ever had (how do you screw up nachos?), we checked into the hotel and took a 30 minute nap.

So our first practice swim in the ocean was later that afternoon. Bring goggles, body glide, sun block and the as yet still unopened wetsuit. It was the first-time for me trying on the wetsuit and I was pretty excited. I also was happy to discover in the unpacking that it was the sleeveless kind which look ever so much cooler, accentuating my Andre the Giant python cut. That being said, the one aspect of training that I was never able to really get my hands around was the idea of just wearing body-hugging tri-shorts without any short cover. I never viewed myself as one of “those” type of guys, and was afraid I was taking the first step on the slippery slope that would inevitably lead to full-out poolside Speedos.

But back to the swim. Besides apparel issues, I was also very focused on water safety. This swim was taking place in ocean water, and everyone knows that’s where sharks live (I learned this from watching over 200+ hours of Shark Week programming on the Discovery Channel over the past fifteen years. I am obsessed with that crap. I mean I have been watching the same shark programs year after year, and it still tingles every time I see one of those great whites breach). Surrounded by hundreds of kicking, seal-like bodies milling about the pier, how could one not think of sharks, particularly in light of the fact that I had just attended a black-tie charity event two days earlier in which John Williams conducted the infamous score to Jaws for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra with Steven Spielberg narrating. Suffice it to say, I didn't get eaten, though secretly I know it was a closer call than anyone realizes.

The water was 81 degrees and very salty, but felt absolutely amazing. I thought to myself that it was worth potentially being an appetizer for a shark just for this sensation, and tried to put that primal fear in the back of my mind, or at least channel it into more powerful swimming strokes. As I said before, I had never swum with a wetsuit on, and despite the initial constriction of my upper body mobility, it was pretty nifty how buoyant you became. All this time, there is one rather important detail I have not yet mentioned about the swim. Despite being a gorgeous 80-some odd degree Florida day, the wind was uncharacteristically gusting at around 30-40mph and was really stirring up the water. What this translated into was that everything you ever learned about swimming in a lap pool could be thrown completely out the window. The height between wave peak and trough was at least 3-4 feet, and you had to slow or accelerate your stroke depending on where your arm was relative to the size and speed of the wave (or at least that was what I tried to do). As a fairly competent swimmer, I viewed this as fun, but I could see the people around me blanch. Furthermore, there was a rumor spreading that wetsuits would not be allowed race-day if the water temperature was above 78 degrees, and many people around me clearly viewed their suit as essential to their very participation.

After the practice swim, we returned to the hotel and rested before heading over to Grazzios, a well-regarded Italian eatery in the area. After all the swimming and sun, I had worked up quite an appetite, and I would be hard put to recall a time when a dish of Pollo Parmigiano tasted so good. The dinner was with Paul and Jeremy (another mentor)'s group of mentees, of which I was one, and their families. I hadn't anticipated the weekend being such a family-focused event, and regretted that I had not forced my family to participate (neither my sister or father contributed a dime for the cause, so perhaps I overestimate my ability to influence them), though Paul kindly lent me his mother for emotional support. After dinner, we walked back home and watched the Phoenix Suns get robbed of a victory by the Lakers in OT in game 4. They would have their revenge, but that is a story for another day...

One observation I had about the town of St. Petersburg was that it had the oddest mix of characters. There was simply no rhyme or reason to the types of people you would see hanging around each other. It was like mixing up the crew from Golden Girls (this is Florida after all), with the jailbait teenagers from the OC/ Laguna Beach, and also adding in a strong Goth contingent from a Marilyn Manson video mixed with the bling-bling cast from a 50-Cent video. I even saw a NYC-style drug deal go down in a parking lot near the hotel which would have done credit to Coop City in the Bronx. Maybe it was just the salt air, but the city was just weird.

Saturday morning we got up after a restful sleep and met downstairs at 8:00AM for another morning swim to continue our acclimation to the ocean environment. The winds were even worse than the day before, but the good news was that the water temperature had dropped six degrees to 75 F, meaning we would likely be able to do wetsuits. I registered later that morning for the race, checked in my trusty Cannondale road bike at the transition area in the afternoon and prepared for the carbo-load dinner that night. At 6:30 PM, 5-6 chapters of the TNT team met downstairs (~300 people) and ate some soggy, over-cooked pasta and delicious, soft-chew cookies (why the hell are they giving us cookies before a race? I'm no nutritionist but that's a bad idea. I couldn't control myself and had to eat three). Cookies aside, I had a hard time stuffing the unsavory slop down the hatch, and was forced to steal two slices of pepperoni pizza the night before the race from Paul and Dave though this would later come to haunt me as you would read. Following dinner, there were some motivational speeches given by cancer survivors, and a very awkward address given by David Scott, a zillion time world-Iron man champion who once slew a lion armed only with his sheer determination and force of will. His comments about just going for it and pushing yourself to the limit on each event including the swim nearly caused six separate heart attacks. You have to remember that TNT is almost by definition a group of amateurs, and most people were freaked out enough by the hurricane force winds chopping up the water, and the last thing these coaches wanted was advice to use up all your energy on the first event (in the swim, not finishing means dying). At the end of the dinner when we ran through last minute things, the first thing they brought up was their unanimous disagreement with his advice.

The dinner was also really a time for a bit of reflection, and made me appreciate how lucky I have been that the cancer battles that have been waged close to me have all thus far been successful ones (cousin, aunt and mom to name a few). I would say the majority of my fellow racers all had family and friends who had passed away from the disease, and there were even two people racing who themselves had only recently won battles against the disease. All in all, made for a somber close, which I felt was very fitting. In all the commotion leading up to the race with all the attention focused on your own individual preparedness, it can be very easy to get distracted from what you are actually racing for. I think everyone left that meeting feeling pretty good about the money they had been able to raise, and being part of something bigger than themselves.

That night, I started to feel a little bit of pre-race jitters, but really was overcome with the surrealness of the whole weekend. How wonderful was it not to be working on Project Warrior (those at MS can appreciate this one most perhaps)? How glorious is hot weather? And how weird a place is St. Petersburg? How happy will I feel when the race is over? Handicapping for my current fitness level, I added fifteen minutes to the original 3:00:00 time goal I had set for myself three months earlier, but really didn't feel that strong about things either way. I tried to tell myself that finishing was the goal, and all that other soft-core mumbo-jumbo you say when you are trying to convince yourself you're not a wuss. I did have some real concerns. Firstly, I had only ridden my bicycle, and for that matter any bicycle, once in the past ten years. And the one time I did ride it, I realized that unlike jogging, riding the bike outdoors is significantly harder than a stationary bike, and damn does it ever make your ass hurt. And I really didn't feel comfortably riding in a pack (despite drafting not being allowed in the race), because I frankly didn't have enough control over the bike to not crash into people around me. Biking was the biggest worry area for me. Jogging would suck, but at least it was to be the last leg. My only goal for the jog was NO walking allowed. Not even for one step, though that half-ass jog with the hard arm-pump which is probably even slower than just simply walking was perfectly acceptable. Form over substance - just like work.

Let me set the stage of the morning’s race. So the wake-up time was around 4:45 AM, as the transition area is only open from 5:00AM to 7:00AM, closing as the first wave of swimmers depart. The transition area was around a mile walk from the race start on the beach. My start-time was to be 7:05 AM, and unbeknownst to me until the night before the race was that I would actually be in the first wave of non-super-professionals. This by no means was because of my superior athletic prowess, it was entirely due to the fact that I turned 30 two weeks earlier, and the 30-34 male age group was the fastest. Women wouldn't start running until an hour or so after the race began, so it would be a dude-only race from my perspective. That was doubly painful as I was hoping that the humiliation of being passed by a woman 20 years my senior would help push me to my limit, but it was to be all over-tanned, sinewy men instead.
I woke up early the morning of the race, got all my things together and headed off alone to the transition area for the marking. At the marking, the race officials record your race number on your shoulders and quads with a magic marker, and also denote your age on the back of your left calf (to really rub it in when some 60 year old dusts you on the run, which yes, of course did later happen). The temperature was probably in the 60's in the morning, but it was still extremely windy and I stupidly went out with only the purple, light-weight tank top that TNT provided to me. Fortunately, I had my wetsuit with me, which I put on to keep warm. There was one big logistical challenge that I fortunately had the foresight to anticipate the night before the race. I have really bad vision and cannot wear contacts because my eyes are too sensitive.


As I mentioned earlier, the transition area where the bike and all the gear was left was around a mile away from the race start, and anything I brought with me to the start, I would need to swim over with which of course meant that I could not bring sunglasses nor wear sneakers. To deal with this, I wore a crappy pair of old socks which I threw away at the start, and donned my prescription goggles to navigate my way. So I pretty much looked like a total moron walking over in the pre-sunrise darkness, since presumably no one realized they were prescription goggles. Better that than walk into trees, I suppose.

So I made my way to the beach. Paul met me a few minutes before we lined up for the heat to zip me up, and with a whistle we were off. My strategy was to stay away from the kicking, spitting and biting pack and swim along closer to the pier - more distance, but less people. What I had not fully accounted for was just how difficult it was to see where the hell you were going with all the waves. I kept my nose down and plowed on through for a bit, and swung way wide on the first left turn. Fortunately for me, I am a left breather, which was critical on the second leg where you swam parallel to the enormous waves. I ended up drinking a ton of Tampa's salty brew, and am horrified to imagine how dedicated right-breathers fared. The swim portion was 1.5km, but I am sure that I ended up swimming closer to 2km before it was all said and done, winding around left and right without a clue in the world where I was going. I guess the proof that I was really off-course was that I never really ran into anyone the entire time and there were hundreds of people in the water at the same time. When I finally made my way to the stairs, I felt pretty good, except for the fact that I slipped on the way up and banged my shin really hard on the metal stair right where my shin splints were beginning to flare up. The water was extremely choppy throughout the race, and the wind only picked up more as time went on. Ultimately, when the TNT amateurs started swimming at 9AM, they had to rescue and drag out over 50 people (out of ~3,000) because of the turbulent seas.

I guess I took my time at the rest stop. I felt like I moved along at a reasonable speed, but the race time clock doesn't lie and I spent over five and half minutes changing clothes, hydrating and eating my Powerbar Apple-Cinnamon goo. Next I ran the bike out to the course, and successfully was able to clip myself onto the pedals without much ado. (Did you know that these cyclists have shoes that actually attach themselves to the bike pedals. I didn't until two weeks before the race when I bought a pair). The wind was absolutely gusting and made it feel like it was uphill the entire race. I don't know how it was possible that this wind was always in front of me, but it was. It followed me. Wind is tricky like that.

The cycling leg was where I started to become a bit demoralized and lost some of my competitive spirit. I swam the first part of the race in OK time. The biking situation was another matter entirely. I did not pass a single person on my bicycle the entire 25 miles. Let me repeat. I did not pass a single person on my bicycle the entire 25 miles. Even the guy with the flat on Mile 5 who I rode by did eventually pass me back before it was all over. In my visualizations, I had always fantasized passing all these overweight, middle-aged guys who were also doing their first triathlon, but I soon sadly realized that I was that guy to everyone else. A large part of this was because I suck as a cyclist, but another factor that I didn't fully appreciate as the bodies flew by was that starting first meant that there simply weren't any people in front of me to pass - I was the first wave of non-professionals which consisted of around 150 people. At least that is my rationalization now, 300 + hours later. The math seems compelling.

Another dynamic to the race worth mentioning is that I was racing as part of TNT, which represented ~20% of all race participants. Almost all of us were wearing rather flamboyant, easily-recognizable purple tank tops, and I guess the way it worked was that every time we saw a fellow racer, particularly if they looked like their energy was flagging, we'd shout "Go Team". Needless to say, I got a lot of "Go Team" shouts along the way. What surprised me was the effect these encouragements had on you. I found that it really lifted my energy for a short period of time, and helped to keep me focused. Makes me re-evaluate the impact all those cheering fans must have on marathon runners.

One other issue that I hesitate whether to mention was that I felt the urge to go to the bathroom immediately after the swim. Though people told me it was OK to just go, and the magic of tri-shorts would conceal the embarrassment, I didn't feel comfortable with that outcome. I am a full-grown adult, for christsakes, not an infant. And this for me was a (very) amateur event with no money/prize linked to my time. And so I decided to hold it and trust to my faith - faith, that is, that dehydration-induced constipation would eventually solve this problem. It did.

By mile 20 of the bike my bottom was killing me (How does Lance do it?). I persevered and crossed the finish, reminding myself the whole last mile to clip out, clip out for the love of God, don't fall in front of everyone. I did remember and it was OK. I brought my bike to the transition area, drank a lot of liquid since I didn't drink once the entire bike ride for fear of crashing (hell, I only looked at my stopwatch twice during the bike because it was angled the wrong way on my wrist and I didn't feel comfortable taking my hands off the handlebars ). I swapped shoes and did the half-jog to the start of the final 10km. My legs felt like jelly, but mile 1 came up much faster than I expected and it was nice knowing that I was 16% done. Once I got to the halfway mark, I felt good re-running the route I had just run and brought it home.

When I finally got to the finish line, I was actually overcome with a sense of disappointment, because I still had so much gas left in the tank. I looked at my watch and it showed 3 hours, 21 minutes and 43 seconds. Although it was technically a race, I had mentally treated it much more as an extended workout, and ended with a lot of energy. The arch on my right front was hurting quite a bit, an old football injury, but my heart rate was quite low and I know I could have gone on much further. I really should have pushed myself a bit harder. The problem was that I hadn't trained hard or long enough to know what my limits actually were, the equivalent to borrowing someone's car that had a broken fuel gauge and not knowing how far you could go. I can honestly say that writing this frigging email has taken much more out of me than the race itself did (though in all credit this is a pretty lengthy email). I guess I will just have to try harder next time, and yes there will be more.

That night, there was some crazy drunken fun which I generally observed, but did not partake. The next day was a poolside nirvana complete with yummy strawberry daiquiris and plentiful restoring sun, marred only by the annoying drunken antics of a 28-year old female part-time kindergarten teacher and full-time skank, who moonlighted as a bartender at an upscale eastern Pennsylvanian strip club. She invited herself over to join our poolside group, and just wouldn't leave us alone. I don't know why I mention her in this generally PG-email, but I was just so disgusted by the idea of anyone that I know or care about ever turning out like her, that I feel obligated to bring it up. Dinner at Chile's in the airport and a mildly delayed flight back to LGA wrapped up the trip.

All in all, it was an amazing journey. My key takeaways from the race can be summarized in the following bullet points (cannot take the business man out of me).

• I truly have no sense of my current fitness level, as I simultaneously both radically under- and over-estimate my abilities
• I am very lucky for having lived as long as I have in good health, and need to do more to ensure that I keep it that way (Seeing the race pictures from the event was truly a humbling experience. I didn't know that I looked that bad, which is why no photos for you)
• I continue to feel very proud that I helped raise money for an excellent cause
• I became comfortable donning skin-tight body-hugging shorts in the span of 24 hours (this one pains me the most)

So the race was now over, and I was back in NYC, a newly-minted triathlete. I had my big apartment move to look forward to the next day. And Project Warrior. Always Project Warrior.

CJ

PS- I once again want to thank everyone for their generous donations; in total you have helped me raise over $4,300 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I also want to thank Paul van Hook for inspiring me that fateful night in Chicago to embark on this journey in the first place.