racing from a different perspective

I've definitely admitted my fear of deep dark water before. And the name of the triathlon on Saturday didn't ease my fears: "Bottomless Tri." So did this mean the lake was some abyss in the middle of the desert that nobody had found the bottom of yet? Maybe it was just so dark down there that it looked like an ocean trench? *shivers* 

As it turns out, this Bottomless Lake, which is in a string of them near Roswell, has a bottom which is 90 feet below the surface. I don't know exactly why they have to tell me the depths of these things; I always had to look away from the depth finders on ski boats before I'd get into the water. And googling images of the lake didn't help. Exactly how big is this fish??

Lake Lea, the one we swam in, is a water filled sink hole (so it could be getting deeper all the time?), and was really beautiful. The water was clear enough to see at least 10 feet, which is saying a lot for this southerner used to swimming in mud.

So I busied myself before the race doing the usual setting up, helping the man who blew up THREE tubes before the start (if I hadn't been starting in 5 minutes, I probably would've grabbed it from him and done it myself), and getting a good warm up ride and run in. 

This was a the shortest triathlon I've ever done at 450ish meter swim, 8ish mile bike, and 2.6ish mile run. Or something like that. And while I'm not in sprinting shape by any means, I was looking forward to being finished well under an hour. 

I got in the water to warm up cool off in my awesome new wetsuit and paddled around just a bit before they called the women to the starting line. Good, no time to panic. All 18 of us lined up waist deep waiting for the gun. It was a straight out and back, almost all the way across the clear blue water. Within 100 yards I found myself checking out who was around me. I found some feet, kept bumping into them, moved over and did the same to more feet, and realized that these two were the lead girls. I WAS IN THE LEAD PACK! Never before have I been in the lead pack in the swim. Not even for 5 yards. Really. 

I never start too quickly in the swim for fear of panicking, and found that I was staying steady while one of the girls was fading. Getting close to the turn buoy, I was coming up on the inside of the lead girl, who, by the way, was not wearing a wetsuit. I rounded the buoy first and pulled a little ahead. Sure enough, I did it. I pulled to the front of the pack! Now to hang on... When I don't want to panic, I have the tendency to close my eyes while my head is in the water, only opening them to sight above the surface. Because of this and my excitement of leading a swim, I managed to keep images of lake monsters out of my head. I had nothing but smooth clear water in front of me. And I did it! I held them off and came out first to the sound of the men and spectators cheering and my name being announced on the loudspeaker! 

I ran through a quick hose shower and even told the kid holding it, "I've never been first out of the water before!" I heard a comment from the water table, "Is that the first swimmer?" I might've said, "YES! Can you believe it?" 

I could just end the race report there, since I've never been so proud of my swimming. 

The short story is I won overall. But here's the rest, which is a little less exciting. Into T1 I was closely followed by a couple of other girls, including the non-wetsuit wearers. The one right behind me hopped on her bike just as I was, and I kind of let her get ahead of me, just to check her out. Despite the big college trisuit, she had no TT bars of any sort, so I felt a little relief that maybe the swim was really her strong suit.

Immediately out of T1 was the longest hill of the day. I'd been warned of this, but we'd ridden it in warm up and knew these were flatlanders talking about the size of it. Big school tri suit was hurting right at the start and I couldn't just sit there behind her, so I passed. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't look back. Before the top of the hill, a motorcycle with a yellow clad rider passed and stayed 200 yards ahead of me. A pace vehicle! In yellow, no less! I was fully expecting a woman on the back holding a chalkboard with my lead scrawled in minutes and seconds. 

The road surface was definitely the hardest part of the bike ride. It was standard chip seal, like 90% of the roads around here are, but it had a bumpy, wave-like quality. So not only was it rough enough to take a few millimeters of rubber off my tires, but it was so bumpy I couldn't make out the biggest numbers on my computer, and drinking from my profile straw the little Gatorade that hadn't splashed out of the bottle was almost impossible without stabbing the roof of my mouth. 

A few sections of road were decent enough to get some speed going, even in the TT bars (without falling off of them), and occasionally I'd gain on the pace bike. Then he'd pull away. Each race monitor sitting in his truck on the route would radio when I went by. I;d have felt like a celebrity, if only the paparazzi had been there.

Into T2 I was still in the lead, experiencing this race from a perspective I've never experienced before. Never have I lead a women's field with no men ahead of me. The run was an out and back, with almost no elevation gain, but luckily the few feet we gained was in the first half. It was already hot by this point, and there was exactly one tree that provided shade on the course. When I got to the turnaround and saw that second place was not in sight, I let myself slow down a bit more and tried to relax. I didn't do a good job of checking  my gap on her, but decided it was a two or three minutes. Getting to see some men going out on the run helped pass the second half, and before I knew it, I was finishing very first. 

I realized the stress that good swimmers must have. I can't take the pressure of being chased like that! Of course in these reverse order triathlons, I get a taste of it by knowing those fast swimmers are chasing me. But that one still goes down in the record books as the day I won the swim. :)