The Horrors of the Triathlon

My Dad, Chris, and I finished the triathlon this weekend. And unfortunately it was not the fulfilling, triumphant event I hoped it would be. I'll try to condense the horrible mess into as short a story possible. The swim was first, and I wasn't too worried about it because I could swim a half mile in the pool no problem. My dad and I even went to Saguaro to swim in open water and it was still fine. When I started swimming at Tempe Town Lake it was no longer fine. There were about 75 women starting in my heat, and I felt like I was being kicked, pushed, and swam over by every one of them. A little bit of panic set in, I had a hard time swimming, and I kept gulping mouthfuls of water. I did the back stroke for a while to try to calm down, and when I finally thought I had collected myself, I looked around and realized I was the very last swimmer with no one around me, only the rescue canoes. I started to panic again, and this time I started to get really dizzy. I back-stroked through most of the half-mile because I couldn't really breathe, then nearer to the end I regained some control and started swimming. That was until the announcer started shouting through the loudspeaker "Here comes our last swimmer out of the water! Everybody! Cheer her on! You can do it! Just a little farther!" Once again, panic ensued because of all the horrid attention I was receiving out of the loudspeaker. Does this sound like something out of a worst nightmare or what?! As I was getting out of the water the whole crowd was cheering for me and slapping high-fives. Horrible. By the time I transitioned on to the bike I was shaking so hard from embarrassment that I couldn't keep control of the bike and I had to keep stopping. Then I realized my bike wouldn't shift. But it was stuck in the middle ring, so I thought I could at least keep going. The I heard a pop, and the bike got stuck on the smallest ring, which meant I was pedaling 100 miles an hour and going nowhere fast. The bike track was 3 3.65-mile loops, so after the first loop I was done because the bike was completely unrideable. It was very sad, but at the same time part of me was grateful because the bike track was so far out of my league it wasn't even funny. We used to go mountain biking with my dad all the time so I thought I'd be able to handle it. Not so. The hills (up and down) were incredibly steep and the single-track was awful, just to name a few reasons it was out of my league. I was disqualified when I came back in with my bike, so I sat in the transition area to wait for my dad and Chris so I could finish the run with them. My dad came in first, looking very spry and feeling great, and about 30 minutes later Chris came in, completely white-faced and looking furious. His chain had fallen off, which took him about 15 minutes to fix, plus the track was way out of his league too. I told him what happened to me and that I was waiting to finish the run with him and he said "I'm done. I am DONE!" I finally coerced him into at least walking the 3-mile running trail with me, which was a feat itself in the hills of Papago Park. Near the end of the run course we had to go through the parking lot, and some of the triathletes were already driving away in their cars. One particular car yelled out the window "You guys are doing great! You're almost there! Sprint it out!" It took all my self-control not to flip them off. We finally got to the finish line, and luckily the announcer was too busy handing out awards to embarrass us over the loudspeaker, again. But the up-shot is that my dad did great! He finished sixth in his age group. He is a pretty serious mountain biker so he wasted a lot of the competition there. This was definitely not the way I wanted my triathlon blog post to go, but unfortunately that's how our day went. I guess an off-road triathlon was not the best place for beginners. I'm going to have to do another one to redeem myself, but this time I want to do the swim in a lap pool and the bike on the road.


The triathletes, scantily clad and ready to swim.


The two that actually finished the bike course.


Chris and me, looking surprisingly happy after what we had just endured.