In this picture, I’m somewhere in the middle of all those thrashing arms and legs of 2100+ crazy people. It seems that everyone told me I was insane, too, for wanting to do this to myself, and I realized how right they were when the race started. I don’t remember how many times I got elbowed, kicked or slapped. I do recall getting hit on my ear so hard it rang – and immediately thought, ‘Wow, it’s like a Charles Dickens-type novel where the kid gets his ears boxed. Or is it cuffed? Maybe boxed.’ Hey, you got to keep yourself entertained somehow, right?
Anyhow, I’m swimming along, feeling a little cold, but not too bad, trying to remember to keep slightly kicking to keep my legs at the surface of the water to minimize drag, but not too much that my legs are wore out before the rest of the day.
Then, about a half-mile in, I cramp. My left calf just charley-horsed up, right after somebody makes contact with my left leg and I move my foot ever so slightly out of its normal position. I can’t exactly stop to stretch the cramp out – there are too many people around me for me to just hold up traffic. So I just keep trying to swim, while at the same time, doing anything I can think of to get rid of the cramp. I never felt so uncoordinated in my life – it’s like I was trying to pat my head and rub my belly… and jump rope at the same time.
It must have kept me preoccupied, because before I know it, I am at the turnaround for the swim back to transition. Actually, I was about 50 yards past the turn…a kayak came up to me to tell me that I was missing the turn and going off course. So I corrected my direction, and started swimming back. Right about that time I started smelling what seemed to be horse manure. I didn’t know why.
I knew that the bike course took us past a landfill on the Maricopa Indian Reservation, and I knew that the “lake/river” we were swimming in wasn’t otherwise open for swimming, so it made me wonder why the water would smell so bad. I quickly tried to put it out of my head, since I didn’t really want to think that I was swimming in effluent.
The swim back seemed to take forever. I knew I was swimming with the current, but it sure didn’t feel like it. Every time I kept looking up to see how far I had to go, it seemed like I hadn’t gone anywhere. After what seemed like an eternity, I started to see the bridge that marked about 500 yards to go and I put on some more speed. I made the turn to swim to the water exit, and put on a little more speed, just so I could navigate all the openings where folks weren’t swimming.
There wasn’t a ramp – just steps to climb out of the water. I put my hand up for the volunteer to help me out of the water, and immediately BOTH calves cramped up. I just about fell back into the water. I could barley climb the steps, and every step I took was pain. My calves hurt so bad, I could barely walk to get my wetsuit taken off. They had me sit down to peel the suit off, and when I angled my feet for the legs of the suit to slide off, the cramps got even worse. I could barely walk to the transition area, let alone run. As I walked to get my bike gear, I dropped my swim goggles. I turned around to get them, but the guy behind me scooped them up, handed them to me, and continued to jog to the transition. One of the cheering fans shouted, “That’s good karma!” I can only assume she meant for him, because I certainly didn’t have it.
I did manage to see the time clock when I got out of the water – 76 minutes – and was extremely pleased with the time. I had hoped to be around 80 minutes, and was happy to see the cramps didn’t slow me down much on the swim, especially since it was the first (and shortest) leg of the day. But the transition to bike took me a long time – 12 minutes, because I could barely get my bike gear on, and because it hurt so bad to move around.
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