Pictures and final thoughs

First off, the race in pictures:

This is my new favorite picture of myself ever. I had finally found a chair where I could sit down in the finishers' area, and this guy keeps bugging me to get up so he can take a picture. "No, man," I said. "I just want to sit." A few minutes he came back again. "No, leave me alone. I don't want to take a picture now." Finally, the third time I said, "FINE! But I'm not smiling." Once I stood in front of the back drop he kept telling me to smile. "Nope," I said. "I don't like smiling for the camera. This is all you're going to get." This face says, Alright, I'm here. Now what?

Here I am crawling out of the water like a giant sea slug.

... and getting to the top of the stairs before the other sea slugs.

There are like 5 pictures of me holding my goggles as I got out of the water. I don't know why I didn't just take them off.

What are they? Binoculars?

This is a picture of a very unhappy Claire riding about 5 mph into a coastal headwind.

Claire did her best not to draft. Other guys seemed all too happy to suck her wheel. One guy who would not let himself be chicked got a warning to back the fuck off from a race official.

Read this face: it says, "Poooooooooooor me!"

Man, are those guys still following me?

That's right, buddy, you got chicked. Deal with it.

Coming in for even more water.

What you can't see in this photo: I can't enjoy my surroundings because my rock-hard 140-PSI wheels are absorbing none of the impact of this chipseal, and my clit (that's right, I said it!) is being rubbed so raw by the seam of my chamois that it bled.

This was the one and only time I tried unscrewing my water before pouring it into my bottle. It wound up all over my legs and my bike, leaving the aero bottle empty.

No idea what's going through my mind in this picture...

Closer up: ... but anyone who can come up with a good caption gets kudos.

Passing another boy.

This doesn't even look like me! This is the only picture of me running, which is annoying. I really wanted to know what my running form looked like, but I think that this was coming over the timing mats out of T2, so it hardly counts.

But here is proof that my running form has improved. Note: Feet coming off the ground and no heel strike! I win!

Most of my finishing photos are of this guy. But notice the background: me! Do you notice anything else? No heel strike, and feet are still coming off the ground. Now the question is whether my feet were coming off the ground in the 26.2 miles in between?

This was the beginning of a triumphant fist pump. I got it about this high, and then realized I didn't feel all that triumphant. Just relieved. I let it drop. And then...

And it's probably a good thing that most of my finishing photos are of that other guy, because this was the face I was making. Believe it or not, that's not pain. It's Holy shit, oh fuck, oh my god, I made it! It's over! I'm done! I don't ever have to run another step in my life! I wasn't crying, I was just... relieved! More relieved than I've ever been in my life.

No catchers. I really just wanted a catcher to share the moment with. Oh well.

The other picture of me with my medal. I'm saying, Look. There it is. My Finisher's Medal. Can I go sit back down now please?

Coach Liz and I visit the ruins at San Gervasio the day after the race.


The giant salad I ate when I was no longer afraid to eat vegetables that had been washed in tap water.

The heat rash I got from being sweaty constantly in the 90% humidity. (If my neck looks funny, it's because I'm holding the phone on my shoulder.)

I had been satisfied with my effort (if not the results) until we found ourselves at the rolldown meeting waiting for the awards banquet. I knew that I wouldn't get a rolldown slot, and wouldn't have taken one if I had, but watching everybody claim their slots and trophies, I was green with envy. I started to think about which races would be better suited to my body, and how I would have changed my nutrition strategy to not have stomach problems on the run. I started doing the math to figure out what I thought I could realistically do at a cooler race. I was hardly sore anymore, and felt like I could have run much faster if my stomach hadn't held me back. Then I caught myself.

Would I do the race again? Yes. In a heartbeat. Will I do an Ironman again? No. In the end, I had a really, really fantastic time in Cozumel and when I looked back on it, I truly enjoyed the Ironman; even when my stomach was leaking out my anus. But for the first time in over two years I didn't have any events hanging over my head, and I didn't want to get myself involved in anything I would regret.

If I did another Ironman, or kept pursuing running and triathlon, then I would regret it when it came time to give up speed in favor of a long, grinding slog. From almost the beginning of my training, I was getting frustrating with the tepid speeds involved in Ironman training. I missed tearing girls' legs off. I missed riding fast. I missed heaving side-by-side with another girl, and then clicking into a harder gear and leaving her behind because my legs had a gear that hers didn't. Most of all, I missed racing every weekend.

This year my biggest barriers were the mental ones that kept me from giving it the old college try and mustering the chutzpah to stick it out to the end of long, long races. So next season is going to be all about short, fast, aggressive bike rides. I'm going to focus on road racing with a reach goal of upgrading to Cat II by the end of the season. Because I really do love the triathlon style of riding, I'm going to do some aquabikes for fun as well. I'm thinking of doing Rev 3 again, perhaps Timberman (does anyone know if that's still open), the Plymouth Rock Iron-distance race, and maybe Patriot again.

But for the next month, I am going to be doing some weightlifting. That's right. I'm putting the bike, running shoes, and swimsuit away, and I'm heading out to pump some iron. I'll see you in the gym!

Photos and Dropping Out

The photos were finally posted from the Patriot last weekend. For those of you who are too lazy to read the race report, here is the condensed visual version:

Me, Michelle, and some random woman who is NOT Big Red. This is absolutely, positively not Red, who I promised I would not post pictures of. The woman on the left is SOME OTHER LADY.

Finally it was time for my wave to start. I don't know if I'm in this picture, but let's imagine that this girl in the sleeveless wetsuit and black goggles is me. I have a sleeveless wetsuit and black goggles!

How very me. I'm not even out of the water and I'm checking my watch. I can never remember unzipping my wetsuit... I guess I do it as soon as I stand up.

I love this picture. You can totally see on my face that I can't believe the time that my watch says. It turns out that the course was about 500m short. I'm glad that the photographer got a picture of my double take!

Alright, ONWARDS! (I totally look like shit in this picture! I look about 20 years older than I am.)

Here we go!

This isn't me, but I found it in the lost & found and I love this picture! She totally stopped to pick her wedgie!

'Aaaah! So much better!' Well it looks like she's having fun.

Yes! This is the part we've all been waiting for!

I remember almost crashing into this guy. God knows why he decided to mount on the inside rather than the outside where there was much more room... He never passed me. Nobody did.
Nice helmet visor, buddy. Is this a mountain bike race?

And off we go!

I love the following sequence because you can see me coming at you, and see my whole pedalstroke. If you flip through it quickly, you can almost see me pedaling and breathing hard.




Finishing the first loop. I'm averaging 22.6 mph right here and thrilled! Can you see how happy I am? Nope, because I ALWAYS have that face on when I'm riding.

Note: Camera side knee bent, ALWAYS! I swear that my legs go all the way around!

Coming at you again! Get the hell out of my way, the Speedy Train is coming through!
What I love about the picture above and below is that if you look at the position of my left shoulder (right in the picture), you can tell how hard I'm heaving down on the pedals.

And then I won! (I was SO HOT in that jacket. It was about 85º and HUMID.) What's hilarious about this picture is that I'm standing a full step above the other chick (who I beat by about 17 minutes), and we're STILL the same height.

So there you go. It's almost like you were there watching the whole thing.

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In other news, I've decided to drop out of the Longsjo Classic 4-day stage race in Fitchburg next weekend. I signed up for this race months ago when I was planning on spending all my free time doing road races. But then I met this great girl and started spending all my free weekends with her. I'm not saying that I'm not in good cycling shape, I'm just not in good ROAD RACING shape.

What I'm learning is that road racing requires a whole different style of fitness from ultradistance riding and triathlon riding. The balls-to-the-wall accelerations followed by recovery require a completely different kind of training which I just haven't done. I'm much better at holding 85% effort for hours at a time than I am going back and forth from 40 to 100 and back. It seems like every time it comes time to ride in a pack and do road race-style rides, I come up with an excuse not to do it. I've done a lot of thinking about it, and it's not that I'm not comfortable riding in packs. I'm comfortable riding shoulder-to-shoulder, wheel-to-wheel with others. It's that I don't LIKE it. I don't like letting someone else dictate my pace, and I don't like being lead through potholes and over branches. I don't like going slow when my legs want to go fast, and I definitely don't like when they make me go faster than I feel like going.

Plus, two stages of this race are a crit and a circuit race. I'm comfortable riding in groups, but not at full speed around turns. No-sir-ee! I'm not comfortable with that at all. Today I sat down and had a conversation with the King of the Bike Geeks, who knows everything (or so he thinks) about riding a bicycle. He said that this was a really technical course on really shitty pavement with horrible visibility coming out of the turns. "You would just have nothing to gain by having this be one of your first real road races," he told me. This is a guy who thinks that everyone should jump into every kind of cycling that there is out there.

The final reason for me to scrap the race is that I have my 24-hour race the following weekend, and all I want is to save my poor legs for that. I know, I know. This is a strange time to change my M.O. of never resting, ever (not true, by the way), but this race is really important to me. Way more important than a road race with a bunch of road riders with seat posts up their butts.

So I've made an executive decision. I'm going to do the time trial the first day, and then I'm going to drop out. There will be a time to get into road racing, but this race is not the time or the place I want to be doing it. Maybe I'll find more time for it this fall when I'm not trying to squeeze 200-mile rides into the same week as balls-to-the-wall group road rides. Maybe I'll focus on it next year. Maybe never. Who knows.

Point and taunt all you want. I know I'm making the right decision, even if it is based 70% on fear and 30% because I won't be instantly successful at it. Road riding just doesn't lend itself as well to "participation" as "you against the course" sports like triathlon. So if you see someone riding all by herself around the potholes of New England, go ahead and yell names at me out your window, honk at me, throw Gatorade bottles at my head (it's all been done before). I'm confident that I'm making the right decision.

1000 words

The pictures are out from last weekend, and for once they're a little different. The swim photo came out the same as usual: I look a little less buff and maybe like I just ate a grape popsicle, but at least I remembered to shave my armpits:


For once the bike pictures turned out alright! I think the aero bars make a huge difference in the coolness factor. Plus, they put the photographers at corners, so I look like a bona fide badass cornering. I didn't realize I leaned that much when I turned. I was still pedaling in THIS picture, so imagine how cool I'd look on a REAL turn!Sorry folks, I just don't smile at the cameras. My face in the pictures is exactly like my face looks during the rest of the race. I didn't realize till I was weeding through other people's race photos today how many people actually DO smile at the camera. They almost all look like real fools.

Then I had to run. You can almost see on my face how much I am fearing running the next 13 miles. What's going through my head? Running is stupid. Running is stupid. Running is stupid. Running is stupid. Running is stupid. Running is stupid...

And then the finishing photo. My arms look like I'm going fast. The picture almost cuts off low enough so that you might imagine that I'm actually picking up my feet, but then...
(cue stabbing theme from psycho)

...I look like I have...
...AN ENORMOUS GUT!

In other news, I finally got around to pirating some of the pictures from other races recently. There were some pretty great pictures from the Charles River swim, but for some reason they don't seem to be on the web site anymore. The good news? I'M the picture they chose to represent the finish line! Look how hard it was raining! I had to walk back to the subway in that!

And then there was the Cranmore Hill Climb. I was hoping for some pictures of how it was POURING, or the fog, or the mud, but most of the pictures were just from around the finish line. But you finally get a picture of Grandpa (although I'm starting to suspect there are actually 2 grandpas that look alike):

And now my favorite picture ever taken of me: On this one I'm coming down from the first loop, I'm soaked to the skin, I'm running down a trail that's muddy and wet and about a 25% grade, I'm wondering which will happen first: I'll fall down, or my pants will fall down, and then this putz appears with a camera. THIS is the face I made when I saw him: