2015 Racing Season #1 – It's Bass-tastic.

February Dana did a huge favor for May Dana and signed up for the Bassman Tri, which actually did take place this past Sunday in New Jersey although February Dana thought May 3 would never come. But it did! And now it's spring! Like for reals! And there are more races! And everything is great!

But let's get through this race report before we move on to the next event, shall we? (Spoiler alert: I got to stand on a podium!  Also, beware mild self-directed cursing and superfluous exclamation points.)

Sunday dawned disconcertingly cold in Jersey. I'd caught a ride with some friends and by the time we got out of the car at 6:30 am the temp had increased from the upper 40s into the low 50s, so there was that. Nevertheless by the time we got our stuff arranged in transition and started struggling into wetsuits I think we were all pretty well terrified of swimming in 52-degree water and hopping onto our bikes dripping wet. It didn't help that based on the water temp, the race directors reduced the swim leg on all distances (so the half distance ostensibly went from 1.2 miles to 0.6 and the "international" from 0.6 to 0.3 miles) except the sprint, apparently “per USAT regulations.”

Sigh. OK. The "0.3"-mile swim, 29.9-mile bike, and 5.1-mile run were all gonna suck a lot.

In the course of standing around on the beach, in our wetsuits, with the sun finally coming over the trees, it warmed up a hair and let hope blossom in our despairing little souls. Hope, that is, only that the bike and run would not cause us to die; the swim was still not a pleasant prospect. But the “good” thing about triathlon is that comfort level is irrelevant, so eventually the international distance folks made our way into the water to “warm up” for a few minutes before the race start. And I was astonished to find I remained intact! By the time I got to breast-stroking around a bit, and dipping my face in with great apprehension, I had a whole bunch of cold-water-gasping-hyperventilation reflex to overcome, but since that's the point of the warmup it just made me happy I was getting it over with.

Immediately after the start of every race I have a moment of resignation, where I think “All right, I guess we're doing this again, but I really wish we weren't and the next three hours are going to be terrible and I just want my post-race bagel NOW instead of THEN.” Same thing this race, until I remembered not to kill myself kicking and save my legs for the bike. After that I felt better.

Oddly, I didn't have any problems swimming with a crowd until after we turned around the second buoy. While sighting the third buoy I saw a clear field ahead and as I was preparing for a nice little cruise some dude picked that moment to come up on me and proceed to stick with me for the next two turns. This would've been fine but for the fact he kept knocking into me, which was doubly annoying because THERE WAS NO ONE ELSE AROUND US. Fortunately he started flagging as we approached the last buoy (little did he know I was just getting started, muahahahaha) and in the end I ditched him well and thoroughly.

The only other thing about this swim course is that it was disconcertingly shallow. Maybe four feet deep, max? There was an abundance of plants, which were interesting – I didn't see a single critter – but it got a bit ridiculous toward the end, to the point where I felt like I was going to drag across the bottom with every pull stroke. I never did, and it was fine, and probably a lot of people would love the shallowness, but it threw me off a bit.

So. On coming out of the water I had a guy tell me “There's no other female ahead of you!”

YES THANK YOU SIR, THE POST-SWIM WORLD IS AS IT SHOULD BE.

“Except one person!”

...oh. Well.

Anyway, bike time. I decided at the last second to race just in my tri top and shorts and not pick up my long sleeve shirt, which was a nice call to have to make and not a decision I'd have predicted two hours earlier. Set off feeling pretty good. I kept my cadence right around 90, which felt both too easy and exactly what I wanted, and the weather was becoming downright lovely. There were some annoying seams in the road which insisted on coming at irregular intervals, but those ended eventually and I settled in to a nice playback in my head of the soundtrack from Les Miserables.

“Take an eye for an eye!

Turn your heart into stone!

This is all I have lived for

This is all I have” – ooooh look there's llamas! Hi llamas!

The bike course overall was fairly flat, with a couple little rolling inclines here and there. The race people described it as two loops with extra miles to make the second loop longer. Or something. Over the “30-mile” course, my bike computer registered like 22, but 1) this was only the second or third time I've used it and one of those earlier times it told me I'd ridden 10 miles over the course of 2 hours, so it's not super trustworthy and 2) I followed everyone in front of me and hit all the mile markers in whatever order they were supposed to be hit in, so I don't think it was an issue with my bike. Anyway, the course was weird.

T2 was a lot more fun after moving my elastic laces to my current running kicks. As I stripped off my wetsuit I heard the announcer say that one of the lead women just hit the run course. Sweet, I'm there too! Gloves and helmet off, hat and shoes on, grab gels and run away whilst shoving them into pockets.

So here's how the run played out in my head.

Well this feels terrible. Good thing I've got a couple bricks in at least. Hm, this guy looked speedy as we were leaving transition but now I'm passing him. Take that with your fancy tri shorts and well-sculpted lower half! And in front of that guy – hark, a lady! Is that the “lead-ish” woman whom the announcer referenced? I'll have to make a point to pass her... but maybe in a couple miles since I just passed the one-mile mark and I have four left. Oh hey, here are some people coming back! Must be a turnaround ahead. There's the first woman I've seen going the other way. She's probably way ahead of me but she's also like 22 so that's fine. La la la... and there's the turn... and now I'm headed back... and oh hey, here's that lady in front of me I was supposed to pass... but we're not even at mile 2 yet, if I pass her will she just catch me again? Uh-oh, the number on her calf says she's 31, that's my age group, I'd better not screw it up... Eh, whatever, she's going too slow to hold back. Huh, she just said “great job” - yeah she knows she's not getting up to me again. Phew. Ooh look, water! It's gel time y'all!

...ok that's better. I wonder if I'm somewhere towards the lead now? I wonder if I'm at least leading my age group? Yeah I have no idea if I was supposed to turn there. Are there still people behind me...? Yes, they're back there, so that's good. Oh hey, one's my friend Mordy! He'll smoke me in about 20 seconds.

…huh, it's like 2 min later and he still hasn't caught me. Maybe I'm going faster than I thought. Oh there he is, hey Mordy! OK don't chase, you have too much distance left for that... just run to that sign, then slow down... Well that never works, now I'm all sped up again. Oh hey, it's a loop! And there's another woman running back the other way, I wonder if I'll catch her? Here we go, la la la, loop loop loop... wow, I'm closing that distance faster than I expected. And the age on her calf is... 33, sweet! There goes one more competitor. Hey, here's 4 miles! One left! That's only 8 minutes, I can do this! Oh, oh, wait... no I can't. Just slow down for one last little chunk before the finish please... Dammit, shut up, yes I can! 4 minutes and you're done, you ass! Go go go go! Oh look it's the last turn... but I have no idea how long this tape chute goes... aw f***, well I guess I can do this for 30 more seconds at least. Ugh, here we go... Pushpushpush (oh so this is the part where I start yelling at myself out loud? Yes but it's also the part where you quit caring, so... Oh I guess, fine, whatever) PUSHPUSHPUSH YOU ASSHOLE!

Aaaaaand YES! DONE! HA! SUCK IT! 2:42:20, thankyouverramuch.

2:42, it turns out, is a good enough time to win 2^nd place in my age group of females 30-34.  Not to mention that this includes a run time of 39:02 for a split of 7:39/mile. Won't comment on the swim and bike since I can't tell what the actual distances were, but the run is enough to make me happy, even if I hadn't placed against other people on the same course (which I did). So that was awesome and it was a fan-bloody-tastic start to the season.

After this I'm excited about focusing on shorter race distances this year. I just signed up for a 5K series and all my tris for the year, at this point, are sprints and Olympic-distance. In fact, the Brooklyn Half in a couple weeks is the longest race I'm signed up for so far. And the longest one after that is a 10K which will follow a 2-mile swim. Otherwise, no marathons, no nuthin'. It'll be nice to have a semblance of a summer weekend morning but I'll miss my long rides and runs this year.

So two other quick points about the race. First – some training buddies did the Bassman half-Iron distance, and a couple finished toward the very back of the pack. Unbelievably, the race company packed up literally everything they could apart from the finish gate and the timing clock. Like, the finisher's chute was gone and THEY EVEN TOOK THE TIMING MAT. And the WATER.

One more time: THEY PACKED UP THE WATER when people were still on the course for a HALF-IRONMAN.

There aren't enough caps to describe how messed up that is. And my last friend to finish wrapped it up in well under 7 hours. I cannot fathom what the race people were thinking with that call or what their problem was.

Second, and more happily, my Brooklyn Tri Club teammate finished second.  Overall.  Besides Mat of course, who clearly kicks as much tail in races as he does in workouts, who does that???

(Heh. Me, at my next race. [Maybe. (Probably not.)])