Once inside the water, more surprises and "learning" came. I'm not exactly light skinned, let's face it, water was murky (Lake Carolyn in Irving, not exactly pristine waters), maroon swim cap. Fear, which later became almost panick, took over, "what if I get tired?", "I can't touch the lake's bottom?", "where are the life guards in their kayaks?", "if I make it to the bottom of the lake, no one will find me, I'll drown!!!".
It was nearly impossible to keep the negative thoughts out of my mind. I kept thinking what the hell was I doing when I signed up for this?. Eventually, I had to swim to the shore with only a 100 yards to go to calm myself down and re-assure myself I could finish this. Eventually, after a couple of minutes I finally covered the last portion of the swim with no further incidents. Out of the water I went and the fun continued.
Out on my brand new bike I went and the first couple of miles felt pretty good, the bike was so light and fast I was really glad I stayed away from the Mountain bike. However, once again, lack of practice almost made me crash when reaching for the water bottle, I came close to hitting the curb really bad as I lost control of the bike. Trying to get into an "aero" psition also made it for an interesting race, getting me close to a fall a couple more times when trying to stay "aero" and shifting gears at the same time. What I never anticipated was how bad my "bottom" was going to feel like in the last third of the race. My buttocks were hurting so bad, the last 15 minutes of the ride were painful to say the least, had to stand up, sit down, push my body forward, then backwards on the seat, then stand up again, sit down, etc. in an infinite cycle.
To top the tri experience off, the running portion was no different from the swim and bike legs. Just as I was getting off the bike on T2, my heart started racing thanks to a non-dangerous condition -according to my doctor- called supra ventricular tachycardia. My rate went quickly from 130-140 bpm to above 195 in a matter of seconds, not dangerous but not good, as it gets me short of breath. It just becomes very annoying to try and keep the effort. I tried to play some old tricks to get the heart rate back under control to no avail; after a couple of minutes resting inside the transition area I decided to just walk the entire 5K.
People, spectators, always make road races and triathlons very enjoyable experiences. It's always encouraging to hear people cheer you up and clap their hands as you run past them. This case was no exception, everyone attending the race and sitting around the transition area cheered my up as I walked by and started walking. Even though my heart rate never really went under control, I recovered and rested enough during the walk to allow me to start joggin for the last couple of miles. Hearing the announcer say my name as I was getting close to the finish line was also a very neat experience "Sergio Flores, from Fort Worth, Texas, finishing uo strong..." Aftre 48 minutes, the 5K was over, total finish time must have been over 1 hour 30 minutes, overall winner finished in well under 1 hour. I was used to finishing in the top 50 overall in 5K races, this triathlon: 140th overall...
The after race party and awards ceremony is a part of the race experience many people don's stick around to enjoy. There's usually plenty of food, fruit, pizza, snacks, goodies and at certain races even beer, to make this a nice part to stay for, even for non medal winners.
Overall, this was far from the experience I was anticipating, it was tough, hard and even painful, but hey! as of this date, I've completed 6 other triathlons so far and under the right circumstances I will complete a half and a full Ironman in the future, it's not a matter or "if" but more like "when", will I be able to race a half in 2009? I hope so!
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