4:00 in the AM. The loud noise of an Alarm Clock fills up the Hotel Room and announces is time to get up and ready. We go out to the hallway to get ice and say hi to a new day. We are greeted by a black sky, windy morning and the fact that a storm was eminent. The race was NOT going to be delayed or canceled for any of this so my friend and I looked at it other and said. ‘Well, this is what we have to deal with’.

We get 70% of what we needed (we forgot the other 30%) and took off. Five minutes into the ride it started to pour. Rain this early in the AM will make you feel cold not matter what State you live in or what time of the year it is. Off we go to get body marked. We are so wet the ink barely manages to settle in. Bikes ready, clothes handy for transition and it’s time to go to the lake to warm up and get acquaintance with the regulations for the swim leg.

To my surprise the water is nice and warm although darker than anticipated. The bottom has a mud like feel and not the sandy texture I have at my lake. My friend is getting freaked out ‘cause he is used to swimming in a pool and see that he is going straight. Water this dark is really not his glass of beer.

Bang! Off we go. I get hyped and jump in the water with the guys than run their hardest to make it to the water first. After been kicked five times on each eye, three times in the forehead and punched in more places I care to explain I decide such a punch feast is not worth the effort and I back out a little. The current created by a bunch of people swimming together was so strong I would have rather taken the punches. I backed out some more. The fast swimmers have established their own pace and space and I’m in a hole of my own with a fellow or two that are neither with the fast group nor with the slowest. Each of us is fighting our own desperate battle to determine who will go out of the water first. Sad but true and races strike your ego like few things can. Eventually they’ll fall behind and I came out some minutes ahead of them. 0:58 minutes later and I’m out of the water and ready to jump on the bike. My favorite, strongest leg of the event is about to start. Is time to make up for those precious minutes I lost during the swim. I have to say, however, I was two minutes faster than I was planning to. I had planned an hour to do the swim so I did better than I expected. Cool!

I get to T1 and still see a bunch of people changing clothes for the bike leg. It was 8:00 in the AM right not and pretty damn hot and humid. In an effort to save time and try to stay cooler I decide to skip the bike jersey and keep biking and running with the running shirt I had on. Big mistake! My food, CO2 cartridges, Gu, etc had been carefully placed in the bike jersey for one particular reason, be self-resilient, what a frigging joke!

I immediately start passing people left and right. They are spinning for whatever reason and I’m flyingat my own little pace. They look at me like I’m either incredibly fast or stupid to be hammering like that so early in the day. They are not drafting but rather keeping a slow, fluid tempo at about 17 mph. Mile 8ish. Pfffffttttt, pfffftttttt, pfffftttt. You guessed it! The dreaded sound of a flat just eight miles into the race. Inertia takes me to a course official that’s sitting there to indicate Half Iron participants that they must go straight and international must make a U-turn. He asks if everything’s okay and I reply that I have a flat and no tubes or pump with me. He said no to worry and that he’ll call a mechanic for me. Not all is lost I thought. What could it possibly take? Five or ten minutes? Not good but in the big scheme of things, what could that possibly hurt? I’m not getting first place even if I was riding a motor scooter. 15 minutes pass by. My friend gets to where I am with a surprise look in his face wondering what the hell happened. I ask him not to wait for me and to go ahead and continue ‘because right now things are not looking good any more. 25 minutes later, 40 minutes after I got the flat I’m back on the road again. Lapped and pissed my excitement is way below the level I wanted it to be. No longer I felt like I was in a race but more in a battle of my own just to just finish well after everyone had arrived. Still I rode. A badass wind started to blow and some rain made matters worse. Now I was wet, thirsty, defeated by the clock and cursing with each strike of my pedals. The worse was yet to come. The headset cup came loose on the crank side. I had to stop every so often to tighten it with my hands as best as I could. Repeat doses every so often, jump back on bike and push on. I stopped on of those times and wonder why so many things had to go wrong on a race when I never get a flat or mechanical while riding or training. I looked at the sky and a cloud with the shape of a Devil laughing at me flew overhead. Somehow some way I still had some people behind me. 34 miles after the flat I see a railway crossing. It put a smile in my face because I knew it was some ten miles to the finish line. I had crossed that same rail road some two miles after the first flat. If I keep saying ‘first flat’ is because the same rail road crossing that put a smile in my face was also the reason for the drop that overfilled the cup. I got on my pedals, speeded up like a thoroughbred out of the race door on the Kentucky Derby and as I crossed the steel rails, the same sound I had heard 34 miles ago filled my ears like long nails pressed against a chalk board. No race officials nearby, no one to help me out, not a soul on sight. Just a long stretch of pavement that went empty all the way to the horizon. I realized then that my race was over. There was no way I could run for 10-12 miles dragging my bike around and run an additional 13 miles after the fact. Physically I could but my mind and spirit were defeated. I had no ‘brain power’ to go on.

I started a sad walk towards the finish line. I damned my self a million times for not been careful enough to carry my stuff. All sorts of things going through my mind at the same time. All the training, effort and money spent went to nothing based on a mechanical issue. I would have rather pushed my self so hard I would have collapsed and passed out rather than not finishing due to my equipment not working when I was still feeling strong. With the first bang of the gun I was skeptical about the fact that I perhaps would not finished. I know today like I didn’t know yesterday that I can go the distance with no problems. I learned a lot from my first race. The extra minute it takes to check you have everything and anything you’ll need been the most important.

I had a blast. Despite all the things that went wrong, the mechanical issues and the fact I didn’t finish, during the time I was racing ( and suffering ) I had a smile that stretched from ear to ear.

I’m definitely going for the next, the next and the next.

Triathlons are fun indeed. September Half IM here I come. Ready and well equipped this time.

Until next time, brick works is where is at.