The basic premise is for you and your team (or for those brave souls who did the race solo, just you) to do as many short-distance triathlons in a 24 hour period. The course was a tenth the distance of an ironman -- .24 mi swim, 11.2 mi bike, 2.62 mi run. We completed 18 triathlons plus 1 swim and 1 bike, or 1.866 ironmans. In addition to lots of sitting around and reading US Weekly, I contributed 4 swim legs, 1 bike leg, and 2 run legs.
As I alluded to in my live blog, I went into this race exhausted and without any training for the two weeks leading up to the event. I was out every night the week before at DNC events and hosting two house guests so sleep wasn't really my focus. I thought I'd be able to push through on the adrenaline, especially for the short swim legs in the early hours of the race, but I guess I'm old now, because that wasn't really the case.
The way the race works is that you have to do the first three triathlons in traditional triathlon order - swim, bike, run - and the rest of the legs can be done in any order, with the main constraint being that the water is closed to swimming at night. We strategized about each others various strenghs, and my main contribution was going to be swimming. I did the very first swim leg of the tri - I was kind of honored that they picked me to lead. Less than halfway through that (very short, way shorter than usual!) swim leg, I thought to myself, "I don't think I can do this. Forget the 24 hours, I don't even feel like finishing this one swim." I feel bad about joking about drowning in Lake Washington because the water was pretty choppy on Saturday and there were a few times I felt uncomfortable. I pushed through and I was fine, my time was fine, I just knew that I was not operating at 100% and that I was capable of going faster. Did I mention the long run uphill after the swim to get to the transition / hand-off point?
After we did the first three tris, we assessed our pace and then set the goal of completing 18 triathlons. The plan was to bank our swim legs before the water closed, bike as much as we could before sunset, and run into the wee hours of the morning. There were 4 "A" swimmers, and we went one after another and through the rotation twice. Neither of these swims felt much better than my first - each swim was 30 seconds slower than the last. After two rotations of the A-team, we went to rest and the other members of the team each did one or two swims. We were done banking swim legs by 3pm and moved on to biking.
Since biking is my weakest of the three, I mostly rested while our strong bikers made the most of the sunlight. I got on my bike around 7:30pm - right at sunset. I took off wearing my sunglasses and came back with my headlamp turned on. It was actually pretty cool getting to see the sunset over the reservoir. At the turn around point, a volunteer warned me to watch out for deer, especially since I was wearing a headlight. I saw one! Luckily the cliche about deer in the headlights didn't come to pass. Once I got back to the transition area, I headed to bed.
My bed for the night consisted of two thermarests, my sleeping bag, and my camping pillow sprawled out in the back of an SUV, and I have to say it was probably the most comfortable set-ups I've ever slept on while camping. I knew I was up for running in a few hours, but I had no trouble getting in some much needed shut-eye before heading out. They woke me up around 1:30am, and I had about 45 minutes to have a cup of coffee, get the blood flowing, stretch, and get ready to go.
I think that those two runs - one at 2:30am, the other at 4:30am - were the most fun I had during this experience (though I admit it's an odd use of the word "fun.") I thought that the swims during the daylight hours would be a piece of cake and that I would dread the nighttime running and biking, but it turned out to be the exact opposite. I guess since one of the cardinal rules of being a woman is "Don't run alone at night!" it was a rush running underneath the stars with my lil' headlamp. After two decent runs (averaging less than 10 min/mi!) I crawled back into bed thinking that was my last leg.
About an hour later, I heard a knock on the window and someone calling my name. I opened my eyes and my teammate asked me if I would be willing to do one more swim leg. I sprung up and said, "Yeah!! I really want to!" She laughed thinking that she wouldn't be able to convince anyone who hadn't been running all night to wake up and swim. But, I had been hoping I would get another chance to redeem myself in the water. And I did! My time was almost a minute faster than my fastest time the day before and the fastest our team logged during the 24 hours. Some combination of calmer water and a more rested me really did the trick.
That was my last race of the 2008 season. I'm ready for a break and looking forward to being active in ways other than swimming, biking, and running. I've already gone highlighter happy on my YMCA class schedule and, inspired by Shawn and Nastia, I'm even thinking of trying an adult gymnastics class on Saturday mornings. I went to a boot camp class at the Y tonight, and, man, am I sore! Even though it might make more physical sense to keep up a moderate level of training through the winter so I don't have to spend so much time re-building my endurance next year, it makes more sense emotionally (for me anyway) to take a break so I'll be fresh and re-energized come February.
Here's to a re-energizing break!
