If At First You Don't Succeed, Tri, Tri Again

Oh, how I slay myself.

The Santa Barbara Triathlon kicked my arse, as it does every year. I am thoroughly knackered and only writing this out of a perverse sense of duty to my three, maybe four readers.

I did run the entire run, although 'run' may be generous. So much for those eight minute miles I'd been practicing at the gym, geriatrics may have been able to shuffle at a faster clip. My cold was definitely a factor, but bizarrely the blisters? Never felt a thing. Either that's adrenalin for you, or my feet were still numb from the swim. Because DAMN that water was cold. Two days of slightly overcast weather and the ocean dropped 5º. It made the swim seem endless. I could only see out of the lower quarter of my right goggle, and the only time people weren't bumping in to me was when I peered out of my tiny plastic porthole to realize I was seriously off course. I was so knackered by the swim that I gave up on that leg way before I was technically out of the water. You're supposed to stop when your hand touches sand, I stopped way before that and waded in, as if my mind was saying 'bugger this for a game of soldiers, I don't care if I'm in chest-deep water I'm a better wader than swimmer'. Not true.

The bike went brilliantly, I flew. LK had tweaked my gears and brakes, and it was that or maybe the sheer joy of being out of the water that gave me wings. I passed about twenty people, all of whom promptly tore right past me on the run.

Bastards (you included Mooks).

The run was hard, but I carried Anna over the finish line as was my plan, and then promptly dry-heaved on the people handing out sponges.

Good times.

I can say with all honesty that I'll be more than happy to be a 5-time triathlete and leave it at that. Although, if Anna ever wants to do the mother-daughter race I'd be thrilled. Knowing her gene pool, she might just want to consider the father-daughter race though. LK placed 5th in his age group, coming 18th overall, in an open course (open to professional triathletes). My good friend Sooz sent me an e-mail recently regarding 'assortive mating', the idea being that organisms tend to mate with like organisms, ergo, said Sooz, LK and I must be equally fit. Which was a lovely thought, but fails to explain the FIFTEEN MINUTE discrepancy in our race times, a race where LK missed the trophies by one place and 18 seconds and I dry-heaved on my daughter.

I'll update with photos and times when I get them - and if I feel like being honest!