8/4/2023 0 Comments Momma didn t raise no quitterShe pulled over and passed me the tube from her pack, adding seconds to her own race, and selflessly exposing herself to the potential for getting stranded without a spare. How long until it went flat again? Five minutes? Ten? An hour?Īs I stood helpless by the side of the road weighing my options, a girl in a Stanford kit rode past, yelling, “need help?” But as I pulled the cartridge away, I could still hear a hiss of air. I finally succeeded in wrangling the new tube into place and shot it with a blast of C02. A police officer on a motorcycle pulled over to observe my struggle. I fought with the tire as ten, twenty, thirty cyclists blew past. Numb and lifeless, my Mickey Mouse paws refused to cooperate. …but there was just one crucial element missing: I know I can change a tire in under 3 minutes, and I had all the tools I needed. My tire changing skills are at least on a par with my transition skills, and until today I had not had the pleasure of testing them out in a race environment. Although disappointed, I remained calm as I pulled over to confront my situation. I didn’t get a good look at the rock that attacked me, but I was not even two miles into the bike when I heard the crack of carbon rim colliding with something it shouldn’t, and the accompanying fizz of a rapidly deflating tire. It was chilly as I started out on the bike, so I immediately set to work on gaining speed and heat at the same time. The run to transition was REALLY long, but my T1 was 3:15, fastest of the women, despite the epic battle between my wetsuit and my frozen hands and feet. Unsettling though that was, my swim time was OK, so I must not have gotten too far off course. The aerial diagram of the swim course had seemed pretty straightforward, but down at sea level, the boats blocked the view of the buoys, so navigation was tough. The swim took place in a harbor, and as such, it was filled with boats. The swim started some distance out from shore, and since we couldn’t hear the announcer from way out there, many of us were still in deep discussion about the possible location of the buoys when the race started. I tried to get a warm-up swim in before the race start, but the combination of salt water buoyancy and my instinctive recoil from anything so obnoxiously cold meant that I just skimmed along the top of the water like a cat, without actually getting wet. On this grey day, the ocean swim did not look particularly inviting, and the water temperature, at “56-59 degrees,” was definitely freeze-your-face-off cold. Luckily, this time around my rack-mates were courteous and accommodating, and there was room for all of us. I still have bad memories from a race back in Illinois, where I was sassed by a group of snotty, entitled teenagers when I asked them to make space on the rack for my bike, so I greatly prefer pre-assigned transition spots. It was cold and foggy in the morning and transition was first come, first served, with a pretty good size crowd (800+). International distance is what I do best, and I knew it would feel delightfully short after last weekend’s 70.3 Then IF I write that goodbye note, I can tell the people saying that stuff to shove it up their ass.I was pretty fired up for the Half Moon Bay International Triathlon. I will feign happiness, confidence, "just beeing myself bro", all the bullshit. And I don't fucking want to live 70 years single. It is a pretty long deadline so if I don't make it by then, I'm not going to. And if I am not satisfactorily far enough away from feeling FA by the next solar eclipse in 2024, I'm going to end it. I'll fight even though at this point sometimes it feels like I'm actually draining my own life-force to do so. Jeez, this is more morbid to type out than I expected.Īnyway, I've got some fight left in me. I can't genuinely quit this game of loneliness without quitting everything else, but I'm smart enough to know that doing it spontaneously is not the way to do it. I have been thinking a lot about "quitting". Not a particular method to escape FA necessarily but a gameplan and contingency in case of failure. Now more than ever I feel like that underdog and after doing some thinking, I have a plan of action. I have always been really excited by the idea of an extremely outranked underdog beating insurmountable odds to defeat or overcome an obstacle.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |