When I registered for this race, I was living in Dallas. I'd just moved out of my beloved NYC after 5+ years and was living apart from my girlfriend, who was still up north. I registered for the race mostly out of peer pressure, as there was a group of people from a health and fitness forum I post on that were going. I knew a couple of the guys, but mostly, I was going to compete/race with a bunch of internet friends.
By the time the race rolled around, I was living in Austin and I had been reunited with my wonderful girlfriend. I also had no job. I also had only been on my bike twice in two months. And to top things off, I'd only been in the pool a handful of times in a couple months. But I'd been running....a lot. I knew I had overall fitness, but I had no clue how the race would go.
My friend Dave and I decided to carpool to the race. Consequently, Dave and I ran cross country together when we were in high school but had only seen each other once since, and that meeting was about two months prior. We had successfully found some space in a hotel room with one of the other racers.
On race day, the water temperature was in the low 90s. As I swam, I could feel my body heating up and I was sweating buckets. Roughly after the halfway point, I could feel the fatigue from lack of swimming kick in and my upper body began to tire. With each stroke, I prayed for the shore to move closer. Once into T1, I saw Dave and we sort of joked about the swim.
Dave left transition before I did, so I didn't expect to see him again until the run. Dave is a cyclist first and had just come off a ridiculous week of mileage at RAGBRAI. I hadn't been on a bike more than twice in two months. The bike was only 18.2 miles, which I knew I could fake. I figured if I could knock it out in under and hour, I'd be doing good. At about mile 11, I caught up to and caught Dave, which surprised me. I was finding extended sections of the bike course that I could sustain 27-30+ miles an hour. Once I hit mile 16, I was pedaling into a headwind and my legs started feeling fatigued, but it wasn't hard to push through the last bit of the bike.
I came off the bike and headed out on the run. The temperature was into the mid-90s and I was overheating. I couldn't keep a decent pace for anything. I suffered through the run, but finished just ahead of Dave. After reviewing the times, we both laughed. I beat Dave at his strong suit, and he beat me at mine. That should never happen. I guess strange things happen in Louisiana.
No comments:
Post a Comment