Wonder what it’s like to be the last one to cross the finish line? I found out first-hand.
As a present to myself for my 45 birthday I raced in my first sprint distance triathlon in Effingham, Illinois. The year before I had done a "mini trialthon" through my local park district. As it turned out, that had not seasoned me. I’d been training for five months, but lost my motivation around the third month, when I began to dread the thought that I was going to make a fool of myself. In spite of my fears I kept swimming, biking and running right up to race week. My running was a struggle. I had to force myself to lumber along the path at the park, knees aching, shivering in the cold winter months. Every runner I saw go by me made me feel envious and admiring at the same time. Along with my physical training I practiced a lot of visualization, and "saw" myself swimming the .25 mile swim, biking the 13 mile ride, and running the 3.1 mile run. Was I ready? Heck no! But I am a good endurance swimmer and a decent bike rider, so I thought I could make up for my running deficits. At least I was staying in shape for my job as a police officer.
Race morning already showed my inexperience. I was the only one walking around in a wetsuit an hour before the race started. It turns out you don’t actually put on your suit much before the race starts. I was afraid of looking like some kind of idiotic contortionist if I put my suit on in front of the other racers but I ended up having to take it off and put it back on anyway (in front of a bunch of people who were too polite to laugh) in order to get body marked. The swim leg was in a lake reported to be a toasty 60 degrees so a wetsuit was important. My family has a cabin in Canada where I swim every third week in August, with summer on the wane, in cold spring fed water so the wetsuit has come in handy quite a bit.
