Nation’s Tri Recap: the most expensive brick workout ever… and why I’m okay with that.

We did not wake up this morning as triathletes, which of course comes as a disappointment.  But at the end of the day, it was out of our control: the water didn’t meet the EPA safety standards for full body contact, so the swim portion was cancelled.  Of course I was super bummed when I initially heard the news.  We’ve been training since June, albeit not particularly rigorously, and completing a triathlon has been a fixture of my fitness bucket list for quite some time. I felt particularly sad for the folks who were only planning to do the swim portion for a relay team, because I know they’d trained hard. But at the end of the day, I think the folks that are STRAIGHT UP FREAKING OUT about the cancellation and the lack of a refund are overreacting.  Here’s why:

1. You knew should have known there was a chance of this.  It’s the Potomac, for goodness sake.  It’s been the brunt of the city’s jokes for decades!  Invasive Species.  Intersex Fish.  Flesh-Eating Bacteria.  Did anyone not have this reaction when you told them you planned to swim a mile in the Potomac?Seriously, how many times did you make a joke that maybe you’d grow another leg and really rock the run?  (No, just me?)  Plus, the race was cancelled in 2011 and again in 2014.  You had to know it was a possibility.  And that online race agreement you signed without reading clearly stated no refunds.
2. The race is a benefit for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  Do you really want to take your money back from kids with cancer? 
3. Take a minute and remember 15 years before race day.  There are real tragedies in the world.  Not getting to swim a mile isn’t one of them.

“They should have tested the water earlier, they had to know this before Friday” – maybe.  But even so they would have had to test again closer to the race.  When it was cancelled in 2014, athletes learned the news the morning of the race.

“They need to find another venue for the swim” – okay, let’s hear your suggestions.  People love this race because it’s through the heart of D.C.  Unless there are some major renovations to the reflecting pool, there aren’t a whole lot of bodies of water to chose from.

If you want to get mad at someone get mad at the EPA for not enforcing the Clean Water Act and at Congress for not appropriating more funding for water infrastructure improvements in the nation’s capital.  But at the end of the day, there was no choice but to cancel.  So I took a few moments on Friday to be really freakin’ bummed, and then promptly got over it and googled upcoming triathlons in the area.  I don’t want our training to be for nothing, and I need to get a triathlon under my belt this year! I quickly discovered the Giant Acorn International at Lake Anna State Park (a couple hours from D.C.), and within a few hours we were registered for another triathlon.  So ultimately, the Nation’s Triathlon was just a really expensive brick workout!  Still, we had a great time doing it and finished strong.  I’m thankful to all the volunteers who came out to make the race awesome, and to all the other athletes who rocked it alongside us for their motivation and camaraderie.

The race fun was at 7:00am, but because I was in wave 17 (women aged 30-34) I didn’t start for nearly an hour.  You do lose some of the race day adrenaline standing around, slowly getting dehydrated and thinking about how the more time that passes the hotter your run is going to be.  But luckily I found some nice gals to chat with to pass the time.

This was my first time doing a multi-sport race, and even though I got lots of advice and watched videos, my transition times were pretty terrible.  Perhaps in a real triathlon they wouldn’t be so bad because I’d have to take off a swim cap, goggles and wet suit and put on shoes and socks – but it definitely shouldn’t have taken me two and a half minutes to put my helmet on and grab my bike!

Having never done a bike race before, I was a bit nervous about riding in a crowd – and it didn’t help that the course was even more crowded without the swim to space things out.  After a couple miles I got the hang of passing and being passed (okay, mostly being passed), and was even able to really open it up on some of the more open stretches of the race – although I still took the turns very cautiously.  Celeste got a lot of compliments, as she should. The course was two loops, and at the end of the second loop you turn off at a sign that says “to the finish”.  This was a bit discouraging because we rode past all the folks already running and instead of turning towards the transition area like I was expecting (clearly, I didn’t study the course map), we had another six miles to go across the 14th street bridge and back.  I felt like I was riding through peanut butter going over the bridge, and for a minute was legitimately concerned I must have a flat. It turned out to be just a combination of wind, elevation and tired legs.  By the time we made it back to transition, I was definitely ready to be off the bike and relieved that I’d finished without any accidents or mechanical difficulties.

After once again putzing around far too long in transition, I was off on the run.  I found it to be a real mental challenge to feel like I had just finished, but know that I was also just starting.  I can’t imagine how an Ironman must feel. The first mile felt really difficult (again with the peanut butter) as my muscles adapted from biking to running.  This wasn’t unexpected since we’d done a number of bike to run bricks during training. My legs loosened up as the run progressed, and this time it was me doing the passing (running is my strongest of the three legs, without a doubt, but I also have about seven years more experience).  There wasn’t a lot of energy on the course going around Haines Point (there never is), and because music is strictly forbidden it was just me and the road – one foot in front of the other.  I sprinted through the finish line, where I quickly found Courtney and Paul waiting for me.

My goal going into something I’ve never done is always just to finish.  It’s amazing though how quickly I start analyzing how I could have done better, especially if I do pretty well.  There were no clocks on the race course, so I was really surprised to see that what felt like peanut butter was actually an 8 minute mile.  If Courtney had beat me by 10 minutes I wouldn’t have cared at all, but when I saw that he’d beat me by 55 seconds, I sure was analyzing those transition times!  Ultimately, his bike was ~3 minutes faster (which is a real testament to his biking, seeing as he rode on a older hybrid and I rode on a newer road bike!) and my run was ~3 minutes faster.  If swim had been in the equation, we wouldn’t have even been close.

Given how tired I was at the end, it made me a little nervous about how I’ll feel having also done a swim leg, but ultimately I think you just do everything a bit slower and push forward.  So now we have two more weeks to train before we give this whole triathlon thing another go!

Johanna