Everything that could go wrong did. I started off with the swim and did fine. I estimated 30 mins for the 1500m swim and I got out of the water at 28mins. So far so good, right? See below picture:
So the guy in the black wet suit with his arms behind his back is me. And what am I doing? Struggling with the zipper of the wet suit. I struggled so much the zipper broke off. When I got to the transition area I asked someone to help unzip me, to which he replied, "The zipper is gone. You need to find someone with pliers." Awesome!
So I find a guy at the "fix your broken bike" stand (foreshadowing for all the english majors out there), and I wait patiently as he changes some chick's tire. Who gets a flat tire already? She didn't ever ride anywhere. Hahaha...bite my tongue.
So I waited and he finally got around and used the pliers and unzipped me. While waiting I even thought about riding in the wet suit, but I figured it would be faster to wait for pliers than to ride in a wet suit and die of dehydration. Anyways...I finally get out of the wet suit and now it is go time. My overall strategy for a triathlon is to just finish the swim, even if I come in last, and destroy everyone else in the bike and run.
So I take off peddling. About 3/4 of a mile down the road there is a sharp turn. I slow down a bit and in the turn my front tire gets wobbly and I almost lay the bike down and I skid. Flat tire. Crap. What now? I figure the best thing to do is ride back to the start and air up my bike. People who do triathlons regularly actually carry everything they need to change a tube on their bikes. They make very small bike parts now. Anyways... I am riding on a flat tire back to the start yelling out to people on the side of the road "Does anyone have a bike pump?" Lo and behold a kind woman yelled back, "I do!" Perfect. I pull over and use her bike pump and start pumping. With each pump I hear fzzzzzzzz. Pump. Fzzzzz. Pump. Fzzzz. The inner tube is bad. Great. The super nice lady, whom I will call "Super Nice Lady," offered for me to take the front tire off her bike (she does triathlons but didn't do this one) and let me use it for the race. I took off my front tire while she took hers off, but unfortunately boys are different than girls (tires that is) (reminds me of a conversation my dad had with me when I was in 5th grade). But I digress... next, "Super Nice Lady" says "I think I might have an extra inner tube." Awesome. She didn't. Not so awesome. Now, I have a spare inner tube back at the car, back at the start line, and wifey has the keys so what do I do. I guess there isn't much I can do... I take off my bike shoes and socks and run back to the start looking for wifey. I find her and get the keys, grab the spare tire and run back. Then "Super Nice Lady" helped me change the tire and even pumped it up for me. I offered to pump but she said to save my energy. She even at one point offered to give me her bike to ride. How nice is she?
So with a new tire I rode off to catch up with the race, because I was in dead last place. That's right, Super man was in last place. So I pedal and pedal and pedal. I catch and pass two people. I finish the bike in about 1 hour 13mins...a few mins over what I expected. I transition to the run and try to catch even more people. I did the 10k in 43 mins and passed about 8-10 more people. I finished in 2hours 55 mins when it was all over. A few more pics the wifey took...
1 comment:
and why wouldn't you want to do that every weekend?
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