I rode out of transition and realized that my Garmin was off. When it loaded up, I caught a glimpse of the time of day and it was 7:54. That made me laugh, I figured my swim time had been somewhere around 50 minutes, what a great way to start the day.
Because of the fast swim, athletes were far less spread out getting onto the bike than they usually are, and getting out onto the course wasn't even a "draft fest" as much as there was nowhere to go, no matter how slowly you rode or sat back. I made sure not to get swept up onto any wheels blatantly, but the first two miles were very crowded. A large pack swallowed me up at one point, and I immediately sat up to make sure I wasn't on a wheel. An official was nearby, and as soon as I sat up, he pointed at me and said something long in Spanish that I didn't understand. I said what? and he pulled out his iPhone, took a picture of my helmet and told me YOU STOP and then rode away. He didn't show me a red or yellow card so I wasn't sure what happened, but I figured I had gotten nailed for drafting. I spent about two minutes being pretty pissed off, and then told myself out loud, it happened, you can't do anything about it, just let it go. I stopped at the next penalty tent and explained what happened, and the official there didn't speak much English but after writing down my number he told me to go, so I went. A few days after the race, I was reading through all the penalties and rules and realized that he had snapped me for not wearing my race number on a race belt. Someone had said to me before the race that we didn't need race belts on the bike, and I hadn't double-checked that fact with the race guide. So, my fault, I should have checked, but better that then a bogus drafting call! (Get used to this face, I'm chewing in most of my bike photos)
I had some situations going on this fall which meant I didn't feel as prepared for the bike leg as I have felt going into past races. Maybe a lot of that was in my head, maybe a little bit in my legs, but the great thing about the bike is that I knew that all I had to do was stay within "my numbers" that my tiny Garmin was showing me. If I did that, I wasn't going to blow up and I would eventually roll into T2 just fine. So I had no time or pace or any kind of ideas about the day. I focused on keeping all those numbers in the right place, laid down in aero and rode. The first 15ish miles we had a gentle tailwind going on, which meant my heart rate was running a bit low, but I knew that the winds would yank it up on the back side of the island. I went through 20 miles at one hour on the nail (not chewing but apparently I got chain grease on my leg in T1 and rode around with it all day, sigh).
Soon after that we swung around the bottom of the island, where there was no bushy protection from the water and the winds were fierce. Everything went up except for speed, which dropped like a rock. I stayed in aero, drank when I could, and tried not to think about pushing through this section twice more. It was a relief to ride over the split mat and make the left turn back towards town (more chewing).
Other athletes with experience doing the race had predicted a strong tailwind coming across the island, but the winds were coming from the north so I didn't feel like we lucked into it there on race day. It was lovely to be out of the headwind. Pockets of spectators started popping up, and I was surprised to make the left-right-left set of turns that brought me back into town. I knew that how good I was feeling wasn't going to last forever, but it was nice to finish the first loop and still feel fantastic. My legs felt snappy, my nutrition was going down just fine, my brain was happy, and I got to see the poet and Allison and give them shakas and thumbs-up before heading out for loop two (yup, eating some more).
We caught a little bit more tailwind heading south and out of town. I kept my eye on my numbers and my bottles and tried to draw in the energy from the spectators and store it up for the windy section on the back side. I wasn't watching overall time too closely, but I did flip over at 56 miles to stamp in my brain the time, 2:57 (huh). There was an aide station right before the turn, and I slowed to grab a bottle of cold water to dump all over me, got some nutrition down, and then settled into the wind.
It wasn't bad crazy gusty wind, it was steady, loud and slow. A few times I got passed by long pacelines of riders literally wheel-to-wheel, and thought to myself where are the officials now, but mostly through this section I just put my head down and rode. I kept an eye on the time when we started the wind, and noted that it took about 50 minutes to fight through before the turn back towards town. It was a relief to stop at special needs and swap out my bottles, eat a bar, and collect myself for a second before pedaling away.
I got some energy back once we headed back towards town. It was quiet, we were coming up on four hours of riding and I was happy that I wasn't hurting yet, but everyone was retreating into their own races. I split 70 miles before we went by T2 and realized that if I rode the third loop hard, steady but hard, I might be able to sneak off the bike under six hours. That was the thought I needed to keep me motivated heading back out for the third time, so I waved at the poet and Allison happily and then tucked back down into the work.
I had just beeped through 80 miles when I head a ffft ffft ffft ffft sound coming from my bike somewhere. I was coming up near the end of the "gentle tailwind with all the bushes" section of the loop, so I sat up and slowed and tried to look my bike over without getting off. I couldn't see anything, so I got back in aero and thought for a few minutes. If it was something caught in a spoke, it wouldn't hurt me to keep riding, but if my brake was rubbing (I could hear it coming from my rear wheel, this is the brake that likes to rub for no reason every so often), I was going to have a tough time in the wind. I finally decided to pull over and check it out. I threw my hand up so riders behind me would see that I was slowing, pulled over well to the right of the dotted white line, and dismounted. I leaned over my rear wheel and then I was flying through the air.
It was loud. That's the thing I keep remembering, the sound of someone hitting my body dead-on with their bicycle at probably 25+mph, it's loud. It was the loudest WHAM I have ever heard. And then I was sitting up, my bike was four feet away, and I was looking at a pool of blood on the ground.
The guy who hit me was kind. He immediately apologized and blamed himself (yes) because he had been refilling a bottle and not paying attention and swerved off the road into me. Most of the blood was coming from my right arm, which had been hit and then dragged across the pavement, along with my right shoulder and my ass. Someone else stopped right away and gave me a bottle of water, and I used it to clean myself off a bit. I didn't realize at the time that I had wiped both my face and my leg with a bloody hand, but it explained the panicked looks of the medics I saw a few minutes later AND the big handprint on my shorts for the rest of the day. The other riders rode off, and I asked them to send a medic back to check on me if they saw one. After they rode off, I pulled myself together, looked over my bike, and then remembered that there was an aide station just a few miles up. I decided to ride there instead of waiting on the side of the road.
I had only ridden a few minutes when I saw a medic ambulance coming towards me. They looked startled to see me (bloody face), but helped me get cleaned up. The big concern that they had was my upper arm. It looked pretty mangled and neither of the medics spoke English unfortunately (this is the last time I go to a foreign country to race without learning more of the native language, totally my bad here), but one of them said very clearly to me, broken.
We gestured and talked for a minute. They wanted me to pull the plug, to get in the wagon and call it a day. I wanted to keep riding, and after a few minutes, they let me go. I know that in the rules, they can override your decision and pull you if it's unsafe to continue, and while they were reluctant to let me keep riding, they did let me go, complete with instructions to check in at medical throughout the rest of the day.
I got back on the bike.
(Picture from earlier in the day, obviously) The bottom of my elbow/top of my forearm was pretty destroyed, so I couldn't get back into aero. I tried to get down a lot of nutrition to help my body deal with everything, which was the only thing that I could think of doing before heading back into the wind. And it was cruel. I hunkered down the best I could under the wind and and tried to keep my head from giving in. When I was standing on the side of the road, letting the medics clean me out with all their bottles of stinging stuff, I looked back at all the cyclists riding up to and past me while I stood there, and I had a moment, just a moment, where my eyes tried to well up, where my stomach sank at what had happened to my day. And then I decided, no. I said, out loud to myself, Yes. That happened. It happened and it sucks and it hurts and it's going to keep right on hurting. But now, you are here. What are you going to do? And somehow, just like that, I let it all go.
I was worried that I was going to see the poet before I got back to T2 and freak him out. I was still looking for him when suddenly I was at the line, it was too fast, I couldn't get out of my shoes and someone took my bike and then I was running into the changing tent. A volunteer came over to help me but I said, no thank you, and went to a small corner. I didn't want to get pulled in T2. I wanted to start the run, at the very least. That was all that was in my head. I wanted to start, I wanted to see what would happen. I didn't want my day to be over, not yet, I wasn't ready to give up, to give in.
Bike: 112 miles, 6:35:13
I got all my run stuff on, dropped off my bag, and headed out. There was a portapotty right outside of the door, and I stopped to pee. The poet and I had talked before the race, it seems that what always happens is that he is cheering and yelling for me while I'm trying to tell him something, so I had asked him that if he saw me, to wait and give me a chance to say something, and then he could go back to being the loudest and most enthusiastic spectator on the planet. When I jogged out of T2, he was waiting at the fence. I went straight to him and he knew something was wrong. I needed to tell him, to tell someone, to release it, to get it out of me, and I said, Look. I was involved in a bike crash. I don't want you to tell anyone. There is a small chance my arm is broken but otherwise I am fine. I want to start the run. Please don't tell anyone. And I can still hear his voice, he said, Are you sure you want to do this? I thought for a second, really thought about it, and then said, Yes.
T2: 4:22
No matter how hard I try to avoid it, the last few days before a race always have some anxiety. Stress, tears, fret, worry. Cozumel was no different. There was a lot to do and it was busy and disorganized and swims were getting canceled and drop-offs were changing and I tried, I really did try to be zen about everything, to just go with the flow. But I was carrying a little lump of stress, a serious and stern little black storm cloud was following me. When I got back to the hotel after bike drop-off Saturday afternoon, Allison had arrived. We changed into our swim suits and tried to get into the ocean (one last attempt to swim with the jellyfishes before race morning), but we couldn't, so instead we hopped in the pool and splashed around and took goofy pictures with the underwater camera. And when I laughed out loud, finally, honestly laughed, it felt like the first time in days. Like my chest opened up and let lightness back inside, like all of the worried weight just wiggled up out of me and blew away.
And somehow, suddenly, my mindset about the race changed, just like that. I'm not even sure if I can explain it but I finally realized that the hard work was over. The hard work isn't race day - sure, race day is challenging, but the harder work, the bike rides where you want to spin home instead of launch into one more interval, the long runs when you are already exhausted, the T runs where you beg your husband to come run circles in the neighborhood with you in the dark and freezing cold - I had done it. All of it. All year. It was over. And now it was time to play.
Two of my close friends sent me cards in the days leading up to the race. One of the cards said on the front, Everything you want is on the other side of fear and the other said This is your LIFE...Do what you love, and do it often. Those two thoughts were somehow exactly right. It clicked. I was getting ready to spend a whole day doing the thing that I love the most, and I wasn't going to have another chance to do it again for a while. I read a book recently that gave a little assignment, and it asked about some of the best race moments of your life. For me, that was the New Orleans 70.3 I did in the spring, and I thought about Sonja's voice on the phone the day before, telling me, run at a pace that makes you happy. So the night before the race, we ate dinner, I painted all of my nails pink and sparkly, read my cards and then drifted off to sleep, the last thoughts in my head about how joyful I could feel on race day.
I woke up before the alarm. Race morning wasn't perfect, it never is, I realized on the shuttle that I had forgotten to put on my wedding ring and I'm not sure I've ever spent a day without it. And after a half marathon almost two years ago, I stopped listening to music on race morning. It was mostly about wanting to conserve energy for the race itself instead of splooging it all over the place before the day even started. I threw that out the window for Cozumel, and it was the right thing to do. I plugged into my iPhone on the bus and rotated through all of my favorite songs. The song that is perfect tempo for hard intervals on the bike. The song that I listened to on repeat for an hour when I did one of the happier runs of my life at the reservoir, the songs that have picked me up and carried me along. And when we pulled up to Chankanaab, I was calm and smiling (and liberally coated with sunscreen and TriSlide).
I dropped everything off, hosed myself down with lube one more time, and said goodbye to the poet and Allison. I bumped into Michelle on the way to the bus and she was the perfect person to yap with on the way into the race. The swim had been changed late the night before due to extreme wind and currents, and for some reason, this mentally took a lot of pressure off of the swim (and by extension, the entire race). The official word was that it had been shortened to 1.94 miles, all down current. So we made some cracks about 140.14 stickers and swimming sub-30 and then Michelle headed down to get on the front line. I finally spotted Mikki and Mo in the throng and I was so happy to see them in their matching red swim skins and chat a bit before the race. The only thing I've been afraid of about the race, the biggest thing, has been the damned jellyfish. Every time someone tells me they've done this race, it's the first question I ask. And I know it's a dumb thing to be completely terrified of, but tell me this, are the things we are afraid of ever not dumb?
So the pro men, then women went off and athletes started getting in the water. I stayed back a bit, more than I normally would, still scared of the stupid jellyfish. I finally realized I was going to have to get in at some point and splashed my way into the fray. I swam out to where there was a large group being held back by race kayakers or SUPers - ducking underwater to search for jellies every eight seconds or so - and then hung out treading water and chatting until we heard the five minute call. I knew that was my cue to swim up near the frontish of the pack but I heard Sonja's voice again in my head (sorry, Son, this is probably kinda creepy) saying back in April, run a pace that makes you happy. And for some reason, swimming off the front and stress and jellyfish and fear were all tangled together in my head. So instead, I stayed near the middle back of the pack and just waited. When the cannon went off, boom, just like that, I put my head down and started to stroke.
I realized almost immediately that I had started way too far back (duh), but I didn't worry about it, not one time did I feel frustrated or unhappy about the swim. And I know, someone out there is saying but it's a race! but it just didn't matter to me. I swam easy, the easiest easy I can ever recall swimming in a race, and time didn't matter because no one really knew how long the swim was except that it was definitely not 2.4 miles and the current was gently carrying me along and I was watching the sun come up on one side and little stripy fishes underneath me and hundreds of ironman athletes on the other. I thought about my masters coach telling me two hundred times to swim easy, easy, don't blow up your race, easy, if he could have written EASY on the inside of my goggles and then tied a parachute to my ankles I think he would have, but that's exactly what I did. I didn't feel like my arm or back muscles were even working and all along, the current and the people and ocean, everything, just carrying me down. When someone would come aggressively by, thrashing and kicking and punching, I would sit back and let him go.
About halfway through the swim the current changed a bit, instead of dragging us down towards the dock, it felt like it was dragging across, and the chop picked up and I couldn't just float along anymore. I swallowed a little bit of salt water here, nothing bad, and looked for a pack to latch onto for a ride. But I understand now, why so many people love this swim, how could you not love it? Warm water, cool air, neon fishies swimming away in panic at 2500 athletes stinky with sunblock invading their home, and everywhere you look, clear perfect water.
And it was over so fast, so quick, suddenly we were making the left turn towards the swim exit and I realized with a jolt that not one single jellyfish had picked a fight with me, not even one time, not even a baby one that I could cuss at. I hauled myself up onto the steps like a beached whale and when I climbed out and ran up the dock, my eyes picked the poet out of the crowd and I yelled to him (sorry Mom) no fucking jellyfishes!!!! and nothing makes me happier than the fact that you can see that in this picture.
Swim: 47:12 for somewhere kind of around 2 miles, 10th AG
I didn't see a clock, I never saw one all day (but there it is right behind me, huh) so I had no idea what I swam, and it didn't even occur to me to care. The run to transition was short, volunteers were handing out water, I drank some and dumped some on my head to try and wash off some of the salt water, and then a few steps later there were quick showers to run through.
I planned to change bottoms and put on sunscreen and take my time in transition. At Lake Placid, I suffered from a pretty bad crotchular chafing situation, mostly in part due to all the rain, and this time around I wanted to take extra steps to avoid it. I stripped off my swim skin, changed into dry tri shorts, lathered everything I could reach with chamois cream and sunscreen, grabbed my bike shoes and headed out. It was a long jog to my bike and when I got there, I stopped, brushed off my feet and got them in my shoes. I joined the huge crowd of folks running with bikes towards the exit, clomp clomp clomp, a parade of damp triathletes high on happy swim endorphins. I saw the poet one more time, yelled I love you! and headed out to ride. I was ready, I was happy, I was on my way.
T1: 5:48
I've said it about twenty dozen times in the past several hours, but I'm going to say it once more. Anything can happen on race day.
Anything.
If I could draw a circle around me with chalk, I said to the poet the other day, I would draw the tiniest circle that I could, and you would still be inside of it.
And then Graham would shove his butt between us, he replied.
The week leading up to ironman is a quiet time for me, I've discovered. It's not a time to be bursting with energy and socializing and tweeting a million pictures of the M-dot logo. It's definitely not a time to be using the words crush or smash or destroy. That isn't what ironman is about, not for me. So, for maybe the only time in my life, I pipe down. I spent the week leading up to Lake Placid talking quietly with my husband, having deep and peaceful conversations with good friends, reading alone, or sometimes just sitting quietly with my thoughts. I leave the iPod packed away, I let the TV shows wait, I stay off of twitter except for the occasional hit-and-run post, I give the volume button on my surroundings a good hard twist to the left.
I'm not just sitting around obsessing about the race, usually very little of what's going on in my head has anything to do with the race, or with triathlon at all. I like to write the race plan early, to cement it in my brain, and then let that go as well. I've practiced it all time and time again in training, I don't remember who said it but race day is simply the day to hit the play button and then stand back, get out of the way.
My circles have been smaller this year. I said that at the beginning, I know who's on my team and who is standing outside just waving their arms and making distracting noises. The universe has a nasty habit of helping me to be able to distinguish between those two, and ejecting people, places, and experiences from my life when they don't belong. Sometimes it ejects these things before I am ready to let them go, while I'm still saying hey, wait a minute, I'm not done trying here! In the past few months this has happened more than a few times, but perspective in the rearview mirror is fantastic, so much easier than foresight. I see that all I've been doing is drawing smaller circles on the ground. And everything, everyone left on the inside, they have only become brighter.
I was on the phone the other day with someone I'm working with in 2014 and I said something that the poet says about me all the time. I am happiest when I'm surrounded by people that are smarter than me. I don't like being the smartest person in the room, I want to fill my life with people who are painfully intelligent, unbelievably joyful, curious, bold, strong. And now it's November, almost December, at the end of a year where I said on the first day that I wanted to be different. To be okay with being imperfect, but to grow. To be challenged, stretched, it might even hurt a bit, and to fill my life with people and experiences that are awesome in the truest sense of the word. And I look around, standing in the middle of my teeny tiny circle, and I am here.
Standing at the line in Coeur d'Alene, I was looking for joy. Explosive joy, I wanted to spend as many moments as I possibly could with a smile split across my face. I found it, I had the day I wanted, I had no regrets. In Lake Placid, I wanted to suffer, to see how much I could pull out of myself. And again, I found suffering, not really all that I wanted, but it was there.
I'm not sure yet what I am looking for out of Cozumel. A two-ironman year has been a different experience than I expected. I thought the second time around would be tougher to hold my shit together but it's actually been less work than it was for Lake Placid. Mentally, maybe, the physical work is the same. I imagined that it would be tough to keep going to the pool and getting on the bike when it's freezing outside and most of my training buddies have packed it in for the winter, but instead I found that when I had to do it all alone, I was there, and I was surprised to feel strong, stronger than I thought I could be. So instead of going out looking for something in particular to find on race day, I'll go out with an open mind and heart, and I will know that inside of me I already have everything that I need.
