The Morning After (Oshkosh Olympic Race Report)
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
As I mentioned, Saturday was not my proudest day. I wanted to quit over and over and over again, and that mentality carried on well into the night after the Dairyland Dare was over.
I didn't get on the road to Green Bay until 8:30 that night. That would have put me in bed somewhere around 11 pm -- about an hour-and-a-half past my goal sleep time. The whole drive I kept thinking how beat up I felt, and that I was only half-way through this hellish weekend. I thought about maybe just sleeping in and then doing my own little triathlon-simulation workout that didn't involve a 45-minute drive, 7 a.m. start time, a $95 entry fee, or any sort of competition. I could swim at the Y, then bike around Green Bay, and run my old route along the Fox River that was so familiar from my college days at St. Norbert and my post-grad school days living with my sister and brother-in-law. I decided, though, that this was unacceptable. I had said I was going to do this race. It was posted on my blog. I needed to do it. There was no good excuse not to.
I finally arrived in Green Bay about 10:30, exhausted and ready to sleep. I organized my race bag for the next morning, double-checked the registration times, and went to crawl into bed. My sister and brother-in-law were supposed to be in Las Vegas, so I chose to crash in their room given perks like a great ceiling fan above and a featherbed below that the guest room just doesn't have.
But then I saw something that stopped me cold. There on the floor were their suitcases -- all packed and with travel info/itineraries on top. Immediately I called their cell phones. Straight to voicemail. I started rifling through their suitcases. Maybe they had just combined suitcases and left these behind. But in my sister's was her new bathing suit, along with other things I knew she'd want to take with her. I tried their cell phones again. Nothing. Then I started calling my parents. Same thing (although, this is not altogether unusual for them not to answer their phones). Finally, after a (very scary) dead-body check of the house, and calling everyone yet again, I called Chief of Stuff and gave him the low-down.
"Is her makeup bag in there? Or Tommy's dopp kit?" he asked.
Huh?!? My sister could have been kidnapped and he's asking about a makeup bag?!?
"No," I answered, audibly annoyed, I'm sure.
"What do the plane tickets say on them?"
I told him they weren't tickets...just an itinerary on checking into their hotel.
"There's a number for the hotel on here -- maybe I should call that and find out if they checked in," I said.
CoS told me to back up and check the check-in date. It was for August 12th.
"Erin," he said, "They're probably just at the wedding with your parents."
Sure enough, just as I hung up the phone with CoS, my sister called. They had, in fact, been at a wedding in Door County with my parents. But it had been a horrible week at work, and I hadn't talked to anyone in my family all week. I had forgotten that little part of their plan.
Lindsey told me they were on their way back to Green Bay, as a matter of fact, and that no one had been kidnapped, maimed, or otherwise harmed.
"So I guess I should vacate your bed," I said. My sister indicated that would be nice.
After all those shenanigans, it was now well past midnight. I had to be up in a little more than four hours. Maybe I'd oversleep and not do the race, I thought.
At 1:40 a.m., raucous thunderstorms woke me, and my first thought was that maybe it would be storming so hard that they'd cancel the race. Then I did some sleepy math and figured that it would have to be the slowest-moving storm in the history of the earth to affect a 7 a.m. start. It was then, at 1:40 in the morning, that I resigned myself to the fact that I had run out of excuses. The only way out, is through.
And so, I showed up the next morning in Winneconne on the bank of a gorgeous, nature-preserve-looking lake and went about the business of registering, body marking, and laying out my transition area. There were people whizzing by me on bikes and on foot, and some in the water already, "warming up" for the day. I just wanted to make it through.
I was in wave 6 -- the last wave for the Olympic distance event. Waiting for the five waves ahead to take off, I looked around me and my stomach started to tighten. What if I'm the very last person out of the water? And then, as a result, the last person on the bike? Just then, this incredibly nice, pint-sized, middle-aged woman standing nearby started chatting at me. It was her first Olympic, and she wasn't just nervous, she was bordering on scared. I told her it was an accomplishment just to be standing here, and that she wasn't competing against anyone but herself. And I realized that I should listen to my own advice.
So I visualized a good, solid swim. I visualized doing my own race, sticking to my pace, and not worrying about anyone around me.
When my wave went off, that's exactly what I did. I put myself into the middle of the pack, because I wanted more experience on getting kicked and pushed around (unfortunately for me, this was the most polite group of triathletes I've seen. Every time someone touched me they'd yell "sorry!" or "whoops" and move over.) I concentrated on keeping my stroke rhythmical and on mechanics. And then, I started passing people. Near the end of the out-and-back course, when everyone was bottlenecked around the last buoy, I looked back and saw I wasn't last (this bottleneck was also hilarious b/c the course is so shallow you can stand up almost the whole way...so everyone was just milling about around the last buoy, chest-deep in water, until things unclogged), and gave myself permission to relax, which I did.
I felt strong the whole way, and let myself race the last 200 or so.
The bike, however, was a different story. Not two minutes in, I knew this was going to be miserable. After 120+ miles the day before on some of the most punishing hills this side of the Rockies, I just had no legs left. They felt shredded. They were burning. My adductors were screaming bloody murder for me to just stop pedaling. The discomfort was actually making my eyes smart. I waited for my legs to loosen up. But somewhere around mile 10, they felt like they were still brimming with lactic acid, and I realized that maybe, just maybe, this was my lot today. They weren't going to loosen up. They were going to keep screaming the whole race. I just had to deal with it.
I wasn't going to die from the pain and it wasn't going to last forever. The only way out is through.
I had been passed by a lot of people in the first 10 miles. I knew a lot of them were doing the sprint, but not all. And the old fear of coming in last resurfaced. I told myself that someone had to be last, and then promptly answered myself that yes, that was true, but it wasn't going to be me.
So I starting pushing a harder gear. I looked only a couple feet in front of me and repeated to myself that in only a matter of hours, this would be over with and I'd be showered and napping. I picked off one person. And then two. And then three. The 1/2 way mark loomed ahead, and I bemoaned the fact that I had another 15 miles to go yet. But I kept pedaling. Every now and then, I'd stand up, try to stretch my adductor, and then start pedaling again. I wasn't fast, but I wasn't just riding, either, and when the end of the course neared, I felt like I had waged my own little battle...and won.
Surprisingly, on the run my legs stopped screaming, even though they felt heavy. I promised myself that at the one-mile water station, I could walk through.
I saw people ahead of me who had passed me early on in the bike. "They'll pass you on the bike, but you'll see them on the run." Not sure where I had heard that, but it came to be my mantra during those six miles. This -- the run -- was my thing. I was happy to be out here, running, finally -- after the previous hell of a day on the bike ... after all of those weeks where my hip throbbed even on the elliptical.
I started to have fun. I was closing the gap on the group ahead of me, and then on the person ahead of that group, and so on. I had no idea what my pace was, as I had purposely left my Garmin in the car. But I was slow enough to be gaining ground on people, and I wasn't walking like so many others who had succumbed to the horribly-hot, thick, standing air.
Before I knew it, I was at the turn-around point. Three more miles. You can do anything for three miles, I told myself. I picked off one more person, and then one more. Two miles. There were goosebumps forming on my arms -- a sure sign for me that I was beginning to overheat. I took two cups of water and doused myself.
I came up on a guy I remember passing me during the bike. He didn't turn around, just said, "Whoever that is sounds fast."
I told him I didn't feel fast, so as to seem like less of a jerk for running up on him (even though, I'm well aware that's the whole idea of a race), but I did. I felt fast, and strong. Were it not for the heat, I could've easily done another six miles.
Finally, a little over a mile out, I passed the woman from my swim heat that morning. We chatted briefly about how it all went for her, and she told me to run on. "How do you look so strong?" she asked.
I didn't have any clue. I had started that day not wanting to be there, not fully believing I could even do this race on my trashed legs from the day before. And I had raced it. Not speedy-gonzales fast, mind you, but that day, I had somehow turned a training day into a race. My head was in the right place, finally, and my body had followed suit.
After finishing, I stripped my shoes and socks and jumped into the lake. The cool water felt good on my skin, but even moreso on my hurting legs. Then I went to collect my things.
A guy about my age had his bike racked next to mine. I hadn't noticed him that morning, but it was hard not to notice him now. He was beaming. He asked me how my race went, and I told him I wasn't sure what any of my times were (sacrilege, I know, in the tri community), but that I was happy with the morning. I asked how his went. "It was the most awesome race I've ever had," he said. Then he told me where to get a print-out of my results.
The print out told me I had placed ninth in my age group. I was instantly thrilled. Ninth! Top ten! I can't remember the last time I had been so proud of my own self. And not just for the placing, but for mentally beating that day...and that whole weekend.
I wanted to tell someone, anyone. But that's the kicker of doing races alone. There's no one to share it with. I eventually called CoS, and my parents, but it was hard to convey all that I was feeling. I couldn't figure out how to share this weekend with them -- to give them the details they needed to see what I saw, and feel what I felt. To impress upon them just how far I'd come in 48 hours. And I came to the bittersweet realization that at its core, that is what competition like this is all about. It's about you and you alone. About what you have to do to get yourself through the toughest imaginable moments. And when you do, it's about recognizing and celebrating those victories for yourself, because no one else can really, truly do that for you.
Later that afternoon, sitting on the couch and still high from the morning's race and results, I checked to see how many were in my age group. Fifteen. Only fifteen people. It didn't diminish how proud I felt of my accomplishments that weekend, but I was sheepish about how big a deal I made the placing out to be.
But when I told CoS that there were only 15, he asked how many of those other 15 I thought had done 120 miles on a bike the day before. "Ninth," he said, "is great."
It was. And it is.
Oshkosh Olympic Triathlon 2007
Swim (3/4 mile): 26:29:09
T1: 2:51 (Could NOT get free of wetsuit -- got all caught on timing chip. Ugh)
Bike (30 miles): 1:45:35
T2: 2:03 (just. plain. slow -- but giving my legs a pass for that one)
Run (6 miles): 57:57:20
Final epic Ironman training weekend: in the books.
Posted by Erin 8:42 AM
Very neat set of posts about a truly epic weekend, Erin. Yes, you came a long way in those 48 hours!
You should be very proud of yourself!!