If you didn’t see part one of my triathlon download, you can find it HERE.
After weighing all my options and mustering some courage, I decided to do the race as planned. I spent the next two weeks finishing my training and was as ready as I would be on race day.
We realized we were racing with a different level of racers when we got to the race. Impostor syndrome is very real. Most racers were part of a team with sponsors and coaches. Slovenians take their physical fitness to another level, and I was reminded of that during this race. It was more than a bit overwhelming, but I told myself I wasn’t competing against anyone but myself, so that’s what I did.
Oh, there were a couple more hiccups that came up before the actual race.
First, the race was scheduled to start at 2:30 in the afternoon. This is unusual, and I had never experienced this before when I competed in running races. The organizers opted to have all the shorter and kids races first. I had to reassess my nutrition strategy a little, but it wasn’t as big a deal as I initially thought.
Second, when I got to the race, the organizers decided to ban wetsuits because the water was deemed “warm enough.” (It is an ice-cold mountain lake, and no one was even in danger of heat stroke). This was a blow because I was counting on the wetsuit to help keep me buoyant and conserve some energy. Mind you, nowhere in the race details was this a possibility.
The race
The swim was scary. While I had swam in Lake Bled many times during my training, swimming with so many people was more unnerving than I anticipated. The women started first, and the men began about 5 minutes after us, and many of them quickly overtook me. It was a two-lap (750 m) course that required you to get out of the water, run about 20 meters, and dive back into the Lake. I remembered my training to keep me calm and reminded myself to swim my race and not worry about what anyone else was doing. It took me 41 minutes. I was pleased with the swim, considering my watch had me swimming 1590 meters, and I didn’t have a wetsuit; I was good with it.
I quickly transitioned to the bike, and the first two laps were brutal. My legs were screaming at me, but I quickly got into my groove, and while the climbs were challenging, I made really good time and was confident going into the last two laps that I would make the 2:30 cutoff with at least 5 minutes to transition for the run.
Here is when things didn’t go as planned…
When I got to the transition and dismounted my bike, the organizers started yelling at me in Slovene (which I do not speak). I yelled back frantically that I didn’t understand, and then my husband yelled at me from the sidelines that the cutoff was, in fact, at 2:15 and not at 2:30, as the organizers told me in writing. My stomach dropped for a second, and then I yelled, “Fuck it,” ripped my tracker off my leg, threw it into the face of the organizer, and went to rack my bike and grab my nutrition and hat for the run. And I ran.
During the first few meters, I was pissed, annoyed, angry, embarrassed, and tired, but I knew I would finish that run. At the first turn, my husband yelled that my time on the swim/bike was 2:23. I would have made the 2:30 cutoff easily. That lifted my spirits, and while I was running, I told myself that while I didn’t understand why the organizers told me 2:30, I was thankful because I might not have done the race had he told me it was 2:15. It was a gift that gave me the courage to try.
I was more than a little smug when I saw several men, still with trackers, walking on that run course, but I never did. I ran the whole thing, and when my training partner found me in the race and told me that we would finish together even though she was at least 2 minutes ahead of me, I was reminded of how powerful women are when we set our minds to something.
I finished the race at 2:29. The final official competitor finished at 3:27. I was exhausted physically and emotionally. Still, when I crossed that finish line and saw my family cheering for me, I only felt joy. My kids and husband hugged me, and my boys were all smiles as they told me it didn’t matter that they took my tracker.
I was proud to show them the power of hard work and determination. That your most important competitor will always be yourself and to never give up even if other people are telling you to. At this point, I don’t know if I will ever do another triathlon. The time commitment was a lot, but never say never.
While you may never want to run a triathlon, there are some lessons we can all take from such an experience.
- Ask for help: If you want to try something new and don’t know where to start, hire a coach or an instructor to help. Trust me, it is worth the money.
- Push yourself out of your comfort zone: Life happens outside of your comfort zone, and pushing outside of that zone can show you a whole new world that you didn’t know was possible.
- Avoid taking the easy way out: There were many times when I could have decided to take the easy way out, but in the end, even though I technically got a DNF, I would have still done the race because it showed me and my kids the power of perseverance. Remember, they always watch you, even if you don’t think they are.
- Surround yourself with people who lift you up: I never would have decided to do this race if a friend hadn’t asked me to join her. Having someone to train with made it more enjoyable and kept me in the race when I might have decided to take the easy way out.
