PR By Seven Minutes! I Think...

"Seriously, there will be soooooo much explaining to do about how no, really, we're not big losers."

"But do you understand how much I do not want to first wake up the entire house to then go and drive an hour to BFE for this race I don't even know if I can still get into and by the way really don't want to do?"

"Suck it up, just come on. We're already up."

"No you're up. I'm comfy."

"Body you're such a pain in the ass. I'm going to sing the kids' bastardization of Iron Man until you get up... ahem... Nah Nah Nah Na Na.... Nananana na na na na na nahhhh... I am Iron Man ... running people over in my ice cream van... Nah Nah Nah NAH NAH ..NA NA N-"

"OK, MIND, OK! SHUT-UP!!"

4:50 a.m. Thus begins my day.

The race was about an hour south, and I, be being the saboteur that I am, somehow didn't make it a priority to register online ahead of time. The idea dawned on me somewhere in the neighborhood of 11:52 PM the night before the race, at which time I tried, and... no. Online registration for this event is closed. Please call the race director at 588-big-loser. So, it was time to wing it.

Fortunately my bike was already in the car from when I'd taken it to ride earlier in the week at least, so that saved a bit of craziness first thing in the morning.

To their credit, the kids were much more cooperative about being drug out of bed so early in the morning than Body. They even spoke in complete sentences instead of the normal morning kid slur, and didn't use any pushing away hand gestures a la "Stewart" from Saturday Night Live ONCE. Hmm, I thought. Maybe this day won't be so bad after all.

Thanks to James everyone was fed, dressed, packed and in the car exactly on time, even ahead of time a bit, with enough cushion built in to turn around twice for stuff I'd forgotten. Trip one was the checkbook, trip two was the PowerTap. At last then we were on our way.

The swim was remarkably decent for me, about five minutes faster than the last time I was here, and I only got kicked in the chest once - score! I started feeling a little better about life and the year of chill when I saw several people around me side stroking and having a regular old survival Sunday for themselves, to which I offered a few 'hang in theres' and 'we're almost dones', and then it occurred to me I might swim faster if I shut the hell up. So I did, and I did. And ten minutes later I was at the beach.


I always personalize the reactions at races when people get all sweaty staring at my bike, and then I feel like one of the popular kids in the league of adolescent awesomeness from high school. While they're whispering to their buddies and pointing out various examples of mechanical coolness, "Dude it's got the wireless 2.4, OH man check out the Vukas!, I'll walk up to get my stuff ready and try not to do anything that would shatter the idea I make this bike go really fast. Today I think it maybe worked because a few of the bikey guys started joking around with me in T1, and then asked me if I'd done this race before, etc., etc. (yeah, T1 was not Ironman T1, people were moving but it wasn't like most races I've been to where you might get run over if you don't get out of the way). So, a nice little chat while putting on my shoes and helmet later, and Aries and I were off.

Holy crap I forgot about all the hills at this race! Right out of the gate there was a nice winding one, and the sharp turns leading up to more hills a la Verona, Wisconsin were equally not so fun. But I was pretty happy with my climbing today, I passed quite a few people and ACTUALLY stayed ahead of them for the rest of the course, to my surprise. All in all the bike rocked for me and my chilled season self, 41 minutes - an almost 3-minute PR from the last time up to bat.

Yeesh the run, that was another story. All the hills that were on the bike were crammed into the first mile of the run, and the ones that wouldn't fit, they stacked on top of each other. There were a few hills there I don't know if I would have made it up with my dignity in tact had it not been for the very cool J. Matthews from Michigan who ran up alongside me, said he'd read my site, and had been following along on the adventures since my first Ironman! He was this energy ball that seemed to just sort of levitate up these ridiculous, grassy knolls on EPO, and in order to keep conversing with him I kind of had to not crawl. So, mucho thanks J., you're a rock star, man, and I hope to see you again at Steelhead!


All right, well even though the entire run was on grass for the most part, save the running over stones next to the horse corral (which was actually pretty awesome), eventually the hills evened out and the finish line was in sight. Coming down the chute I saw my family cheering, and waved them to come in and run with me through the finish line. Now that was just THE. COOLEST. THING. EVER.

The run was 10 minutes slower than last time and I started to sink into ugh, how much does chill year suck mode, but then I remembered the run course last time was short, and they'd since changed it this year to be the full three miles. So, translation, I probably broke even on the run. Overall that means I PRd by about seven minutes or so with the pick up on the swim and the bike. I'd also decided to give my ego and OCD about chill-year weight a rest this morning, and since I just qualified for Athena I registered in that division. It was a very cool feeling to win it as well, even though there were only a few of us - hey first place is first place (thanks for the perspective, sis), and yeah, I'm coming to believe it, too. I was about 8 minutes from 3rd in my regular age group as well, which was nice to see. Sure, I guess it's all relative, but deciding on a positive perspective really can make all the difference. At the end of the day, 1:27:15.

So, to sum up, the best part of what turned out to actually be a decent race was by far having my family come and cheer. It's the first race they've been able to come to, and for the rest of the day Laura was pretending to do her own little triathlon in the backyard, while Michael kept flashing the curly-fingered Mommy come here signal to whisper in my ear, "Mommy. I wanted to race like, zoooooooom! Super speed. Just like that, Mommy."

Man it just doesn't get better than that. I guess sometimes you just never know how cool getting up at 4:50 AM to then wake up the whole house and drive to BFE for a race you don't even want to do can turn out to be :)

Real horseshoes for hardware, the kids thought that was pretty cool.... too.