This event was my twenty-seventh time venturing into the murky waters of Tempe Town Lake. It would have been twenty-eight, but last year’s Marquee swim was cancelled, due to heavy rain that might have increased the bacteria count. I have a love-hate relationship with this race site. After racing triathlons at this place so many times, I am kind of bored with it. But the site is flat and fast and it’s an easy drive to get to.
The walled in lake makes me anxious. It has no friendly gradual drop-offs that would help me feel safe. I have had many a panic attack in this water. The walls imprison me, their weight closing in in a menacing manner. It’s hard to sight the buoys that guide the swimmers through the bridges in the swim in the glare of the sun. The algae content of the water varies, but it always ends up in my nose and sometimes on my face.
I always have the illusion that THIS time the swim will go well. Most of the time it’s tolerable, but not enjoyable. Sometimes it’s an ordeal that takes every ounce of determination I have not to quit. I think that I will go hard and fast, but I get tired, I have to rest and it is more survival than racing. It doesn’t help that I am a slower swimmer than the rest of the world. This can be an advantage and disadvantage. I don’t get hit because I am not near anyone, but I don’t have anyone to draft off of to help me go faster.
I got down to the race site early, so I had time to wait around. I set up my transition gear and talked to people. By doing these races for a number of years, I know a fair number of people that are involved with them. I warmed up, but had to wait thirty minutes from transition closing to start, so it was kind of useless. The water temperature had gone down to sixty four degrees from when I had swam in it a few days prior. I jumped in and it was cold.
In the fifteen kilometer swim I had trouble sighting on the way out. I couldn’t see the buoys very well and at one point I was sighting off the wrong buoy and went off course. The buoys don’t seem like they were in a straight line, but Tempe Town Lake isn’t either. It’s tricky swimming under the bridges because I can’t see where to swim. Coming back, I got into a flow and swam faster. I saw a first time racer swimming back stroke in front of me. A newbie having a hard time, who was going faster than me was not an ego boost. The way back seemed long somehow, but it was easier to sight the buoys.
I fell on the stairs getting out . It was hard to walk on rubbery legs after being horizontal for forty-five minutes.
In transition, I fumbled with my arm warmers and my socks because I still felt cold. I tore a hole in one sock. I had dead grass from the lawn all over everything.
Out on the twenty-five mile bike course, the way north seemed strangely fast because of a possible tail wind that pushed me along. My heart rate was in zone three in the low 140's, which wasn’t high for me, but it seemed like the right pace because it was painful. The route goes out the Beeline Highway to Gilbert Road, which was right by a garbage dump, then comes back. The wind was blowing the right direction and I couldn’t smell the dump. Coming back, it seemed like more effort than usual, so maybe it was a tail wind that was now a head wind. I tried to keep eating and drinking even though I didn’t want to, on the theory that maybe the run wouldn’t suck so bad if I did because I would have more energy. I didn’t stop at the aid stations, but I saw someone I knew at one of them, which gave me a mental boost.
The second transition time was also long, mostly because I had to pee, forcing me to squeeze through the fence to get to a porta-potty. This is always an issue with longer races. The porta potties are never in a convenient spot and my pre-race planning always includes how to get to them without affecting my bike and run splits with the extra time. Sometimes this involves crawling under fences.
I had a goal on the 10k run to try to break a ten minute per mile pace. I could do this easily in a stand alone run, but swimming and biking tires my legs. Goals are a mental exercise that can help me test my limits; a game to see if the mind or the body will win. At this point in the race, my legs ached badly and I wondered if it was possible to force myself to do this pace each mile for 6.2 miles. I faltered on some of them; others went better. Struggling this way broke up the monotony of the route. My Garmin GPS helped because I could see when I was slowing down. I got hot and had to pour water on myself. I started out with my heart rate in the 150's and built it up to the 160's. I increased my pace the last two miles with the last mile being the fastest. Unfortunately, I missed the finishing chute the first time and had to go back. I hoped no one noticed. All the blood was in my legs, not my brain and it was hard to think.
The total time was three hours, thirty-one minutes, which wasn’t stellar compared to the rest of racers, but it was my second fastest olympic triathlon run. I like seeing how hard I can push myself in a race, but I always make the mistake of comparing my slower time to others, which makes me feel inadequate. My mind tells me that I suck even if I did the best I could. It likes to do this and I don’t know why. The inner doubts are hard to vanquish and seem to defy any positive mental self talk. I ignore them and move on.
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