Donald Brinkley – Columbia Triathlon – Sunday, May 15, 2016

This was my first Olympic which along with a lower than desired volume of training would have been nervous enough. But when you compound that with this being “The Race of Firsts,” (first Oly, OWS, wetsuit swim, taking off a wetsuit in transition, biking after swimming, time on the whole run course, the list goes on), I can confidently say I was a little jittery going in.

Prerace:
Woke at 3:30 forced down a bagel with peanut butter, took a shower to relax, dressed, got nutrition packed up and was out the door around 5:45. I was happy to learn that my bike was dry and after having to run back to the car for my pump, I forced myself to focus on all the things that would go right. One problem was I didn’t consider the walk from transition to swim start and boy were my bare feet feeling the road during that walk. Hanging out at the tent was great though and talking with everyone and getting encouragement really helped calm my nerves some.

Swim (39:50):
My swim can be summed up in a single work, sad. Which is fitting based on my lack of training and understanding of what I was doing. After having read all the other reports, I find I’m the only one who didn’t find the water cold actually. I could have paddled around for hours in there, once I stopped panicking.

I ran down the ramp hit the water dropped in to swim and up I came. All the thoughts from all the previous race reports went through my head and I tried to calm down, but no dice. My face would not go in. So I kept trying. And then the next fun lesson kicked in, I couldn’t breathe! Having never been in a wet wetsuit I had no idea how constricting it would be. And while it was never uncomfortable, I just wasn’t ready for the squeeze it gives. And I quickly started to find myself in a spiral of the more I tried to swim, the harder it was to breathe, and the harder I tried to swim, the harder to breathe…you get it. It was at this point I realized clear goggles were a terrible idea and I couldn’t see anything but a blinding glare ahead of me when I tried to sight. At this point, I started to have lots of thoughts of quitting, about how stupid this was and why I wasn’t still in bed, what was WRONG WITH ME!

I finally came across a little raft thing and grabbed it for a few minutes. I just needed to get my breathing steady; if I could do that life would be so much better. Tried swimming again, and NOPE! I wasn’t steady and I forced a dog paddled meets freestyle stroke of ugliness. And then there were the “just quit” thoughts again. It was just now that I heard yelling and found a lady just head of me in a real panic, needing assistance, without a kayak around. I went to her, calmed her down and still no kayak, finally I made one hell of a racket and got some attention, saw her onto the kayak and headed on. Bless that lady’s heart, while her day ended I realized I was nowhere near THAT panicked and I could do this…or at least not quit.

I came across another guy shortly before the first turn that was having trouble with no one around to help so I again stopped and assisted in getting attention of a kayak. At this point I was sure I was going to have to get pulled, I mean I’m a slow swimmer, and I stopped twice after a panic. After the second guy I helped, really calmed down though and could get to work. I made the turn putting the sun at my back and push onward, now being able to actually see where I was heading. A few (many) zig zags, and a punch to the head once, and I was making the final turn for shore. After getting out of the water and not falling, woot woot! I looked down to find 40 minutes. Obviously my watch was broken I thought. But my day wasn’t over and into T1 I headed at a nice jog knowing it was all downhill from here.

T1 (6:52):
Slower than it should have been if I had thought my options through earlier. First I was sure my wetsuit would never come off. I put a good amount of body glide on my lower legs, but I had vision the night before of it never coming off. Well, I’m sure I lost at least a minute while I stared in bewilderment at it on the ground after both legs just slipped right out. Eventually something told me to move.

Next I lost time, because while I brought a jacket and arm sleeves, I left them all in my bag, thinking, “eh, I’ll just suck it up on the bike.” Well after seeing everyone else putting on near winter parkas, I figured I should put them on. So I had to go dig them all out, which lost me some more time. Rolling the sleeves though made me look like a pro as they went straight on my wet arms. On went the jacket and out I went.

Bike (1:48:42):
I was happy with my bike. This only being my second time on the bike course and having never done the whole run course, I didn’t want to push too hard, even still I eventually lost count of the number of people I passed on the bike, so I’m going to consider it a hard enough effort. One take away from the ride is to measure my nutrition better. My hydration seemed fine for the entire race, however, I added a little Gatorade mix to my CarboPro for flavor and just eyeballed the amount. I ended up with one bottle that was super sweet and one that was flavor less. Got to work on that.

The highlight of the whole bike course when I emptied my torpedo (right on schedule) and then debated refilling or not. I brought a 2nd bottle of mix on the bike, but having never refilled the torpedo while moving, I just had planned to drink from the regular bottle. Well I had just crested a hill and must have felt cocky because I went for it…and DIDN’T CRASH! I let out an audible woot at that time and a guy behind me cheered me on talking about the hill we just claimed. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I was cheering about refilling my water bottle. Lol.

T2 (2:35):
Uneventful. Dismount was fine and I quickly-ish found my legs. Dropped the jacket as it was getting warm, but kept the sleeves and I was off.

Run (1:08:40):
Ok, what sadist designed this course? The only time I ran any of the course was the Brick-n-Pic and even then we skipped the first hill and the neighborhood…and boy was that a mistake. I couldn’t help but laugh when I dropped into the neighborhood and saw the first hill ahead of me. And I’m not sure if it was laughing or crying when I turned the corner after a climb and saw more hill!

That said I’m convinced that any detriment of carrying Ayumi on your back while you run would be negated 10 fold by the increase in speed her encouragement would give you the entire time. When I was running (or what passed for running at that point) up Gatorade Hill her and everyone else’s encouragement pulled me up that hill SO much faster than I would have otherwise done. Which was beyond appreciated.

In the end I blew away my goal of finishing in 4:10 (to be honest I think I over padded the goal), but I still wouldn’t have guessed I’d beat it by 25 minutes. I can’t say enough how much I need to work on swimming, even if not to get faster (which I could use), just to get more comfortable during the swim. But the race did show that for the training I did, my bike and run fitness isn’t in too bad a place for building upon.

Thanks to everyone in the club that threw out any advice or encouragement it was/is greatly appreciated.