Today was the last of the 4 indoor triathlons in the series. Every time I've done these, there is squirrelly weather--either torrential rains, ice storms or heavy snow. Today we are getting the torrential rains. My downstairs was dry until about 4:30AM this morning, and I knew it was just a matter of time before I got seepage. It's not as bad as it could be, but still I hate when that happens, but if it rains 4+" it's going to happen.
Even last night when I went to bed, my stomach did just not feel good. I think it's stress because I started up the tax process for my Dad's 2008 estate filing yesterday, and there are, as usual, glitches, and well, it's been awhile since I've had to process anything like this and it just brings up sad feelings, and couple that with an impending race and water in my house, and let's just say I had some moments of feeling really sorry for myself this morning.
My stomach continued to feel lousy when I woke up this morning, and so given I wasn't racing until 3:05PM, I didn't want to eat any "real" food, so I had a Powerbar for breakfast, a banana (which I thought would help but it didn't), then a can of Coke, some Endurox R4 and finally some Red Bomb (half Ultra Violence and half Gatorade ice) to race with.
I did absolutely nothing yesterday except for a few pushups, pullups and abs. I skipped the jump rope yesterday because I wanted a completely cardio-less day. On Friday, I worked out about 4:45 (1 hour swim, 2:20 bike, 1 hour run plus my extra crap including jump rope) so that I wouldn't need to do anything after today's race, and that meant I could do nothing yesterday. So I did!
This morning, I was on flood duty, did some dinner prep, and had planned on watching a friend race who was starting about an hour before me, and it finally dawned on me that if I wanted to get in a race warmup that I needed to be there earlier than I had planned. Thank God it turned to DST today, because I've been in that time zone for like 6 months now, which means I will wake up at a respectable 4:30-4:45AM instead of my usual 3:30AM! So I was all on schedule except for not doing the math to realize how early I needed to be at the club in order to warm up.
I got there with enough time to do 5' of jump rope and 5' of running, and I didn't get my bike warmup in until I was actually racing. I watched my friend kick ass in his wave, and then it was my turn. Considering how my stomach felt, I didn't have any high aspirations, and since I had already won the 3 previous races, I was guaranteed to win the series title (best 3 out of 4) no matter what, and I didn't think I was too motivated.
But when I got into the pool, it was pretty damn cold, and it felt great, and I just swam strong and easy and met my goal of 550 yards (yeah I'm slow but I can swim that pace FOREVER), and then it was onto the bike. It looked like there might be some contenders in my wave, but when I hit the first mile first, I knew it was game on! One of the volunteers kept asking who would be first to hit the next mile and every time she said that I said to my volunteer, "ME!" I had my second best bike of the 4 races, and when I got off there, I wasn't too thrilled about running (I easily won my wave on the bike).
It looked to me like there were a few women in my wave who would wax me on the run, but we took off and I was in the lead the entire time, how messed up is that? I mean, I am NOT a runner, and here I was lapping everyone and generally not pushing myself too hard because I had nobody to pace off of, and yet I kept thinking SOMEBODY must be a player, but it never happened. I just cruised until there was a minute to go, and then I tried to actually deploy a kick, which I don't usually have, but I must have had one today because I gunned it a little extra, and when it was over I puked in one of the Home Depot buckets! It's been awhile since I've puked after a race, and it made me laugh. The other cool thing is that after maybe 2 laps, I couldn't feel my legs at all! I mean I could tell my feet were making impact with the track, but other than that I had zero feeling in my quads and calves, and that was a really, really great feeling.
We went to check the final results, as I was in the last wave, and my friend won his age group, and when they posted my results, they miscalculated the distances for sure, and I got a little upset about it and went into the office where they were calculating and showed them the mistake. Cuz the next best woman to me in my age group was slower on all three legs, yet how could her total distance be more than mine??? I was like fuck, please fix this, although I didn't swear at the volunteers, but they could tell I was a little excited. So they fixed me up and then I put my results back up on the board and felt pretty good about the whole thing since I felt like crap.
I am now home and have a good deal of water downstairs, but I can take care of it--it's just rain water--and hopefully the rains have stopped, and hey, I didn't have to run for 1:30 after the race so I don't even feel beat up! And I should be able to knock out a regular swim tomorrow morning, and life is pretty fucking good!
I know these are just stinky little indoor triathlons, but the cool thing is I have not gotten any slower, and I obliterated everyone in my age group and maybe even one or two lower, so that's cool, and I'm almost at my fighting weight (I was at 112.4 this morning, fuckin' A!), and now I'm getting pumped about starting the big volume buildup for Triple T.
Since I barely had any calories so far, I am drinking several painkillers (beers) to make some of them up. It was a great day of racing, and maybe I don't actually suck as bad as I sometimes think I do. Hey, a win is a win, right?
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