We Tri-ed

When my friend Steff called me all frantic one night several weeks ago and asked if I'd be interested in bailing her out of her full triathlon, and splitting the work into a relay for the annual HyVee tri, I was happy to oblige. I knew T would be gone and it looked to be the perfect first week of mommy freedom discraction.

What I didn't know, or plan on was that I'd have such a shoddy performance in my prior two races that all the wind would be taken from my sails...to the point that I wasn't sure I even liked my bike any more. I also didn't know that soon after my wind left, I would crash and fall on my head; sustain a concussion, contusion and a bunch of damaged ligaments.

THAT little mishap pretty much sucked another two weeks from my life and therefore saddle time.

Soooo....as race day quickly approached and I'd been on my bike all but TWICE in the prior three weeks, I became a bit worried. I worried more when I realized that after approximately five miles into each of these two rides, I had absolutely no feeling left in my right hand, arm and eventually, my leg.

Nerves of a different sort, perhaps?

Not to be dissuaded, I plodded on. I told myself all sorts of stories in my head about why this was a good idea and immediately my heart told my head back that it was batshit crazy and I should probably just stay in bed and sleep instead.

Then, as if to confuse those buggers in my head and heart even further, I was invited to a going away party the evening prior to said race out at this lovely cabin in god's country, sitting on 80 gorgeous rolling acres, whereby a great number of my friends would be partying and drinking and dancing around like idiots having a ball. At this point, I started to think to my selves:

Selves, perhaps this tri was not a good idea at ALL.

Then I heard via the great HyVee tri grape vine that our registration was missing.
A glimmer of hope was upon me:

I might be able to party like a rockstar at said party and not race, I thought to my bad selves.

But in order to find out I had to go to packet pick up.

First, I sat through the little movie, and then a meeting. During that meeting they put the fear of God in you that if you so much as look at another rider wrong, you'll have minutes added to your time.

Sweet, I thought to my selves, I could probably use a two to four minute handicap since I've ridden two whole times in the past two plus weeks. And who can I pay to keep my registration lost?

That said, the dumb movie they showed at that meeting still gave me goosebumps, and as I looked around at all the perfectly sculpted bodies that sat surrounding me...I began to think better of my wimpy thoughts and actually got a little excited at the prospect of riding amongst all that eye candy.

Sooo...

I went to that party.
I left that party.
I went to bed early.
I awoke at 3 a.m.

I did not swim.
I did not run.
But I DID ride.

And, I am happy to report that I felt better on the bike than I have in months...which was worth it's weight in gold. Not that we won any, but I'm just sayin'...

We got fifth.

For fifth we got bananas and a very kick ass ice cream sandwich.

I also got my very hung over friends stumbling around...wondering why in the hell they got up at 5 a.m. to try (2/3 unsuccessfully) to figure out where to watch each leg.

Like a flash though, it was all over and we decided to go have a bloody mary, a beer...and of course laugh.

And I sat there, tired and accomplished and silly and I looked over at my heirum of peeps, and I was so very glad the good self won over the bad self, because if it hadn't, I would have missed all these moments, and I would have especially missed these laughs.