I made it through the last race of the season! This race wasn't quite olympic length because the bike was longer than usual and the run and swim were slightly shorter. The swim was 1000 meters in the Colorado River. The bike section was 34 miles and you had to go over into California and then back over the Parker Dam to get back into Arizona. The run section was only five miles, rather than the usual 6.2.

Brigid and I drove up to Parker, Arizona on Saturday morning. There isn’t much between Tucson and Parker -- it is pretty empty. How can anyone live out there? We arrived at the casino in Parker in mid-afternoon and went to packet pick up. This went fairly smoothly and we got a chip for the run portion of the race only. We met up with all the TriGirls for dinner at the casino buffet – not a great meal, but stupendous company! Before eating, Brigid and I tried out the slot machines and I won enough to pay for Brigid's dinner -- $7! It was all very exciting as neither of us had ever been to a casino. The strangest thing about it was that everyone was smoking! I haven't seen that many people smoking inside and in one place in a long long time.

After dinner, Brigid and I went back to the hotel and turned off the lights at 8:45pm, in hopes of getting a good night’s sleep. I woke up at 11:30pm and was just running things about the race over in my mind and I had a horrible realization: I had forgotten my bike helmet. It was now 11:45pm. I got out of bed and called Ron to see if he had put it in the car. No, he hadn’t. Brigid went out to the car to see if it was there (magically, you know). No, it wasn’t. I couldn’t believe it. No helmet. No helmet, no race. At this point, I was feeling a little panicky, but I remembered that one of the TriGirls had brought their RV up here and I thought she might have an extra helmet in there. No dice.

So, I went out to the front desk and asked for the key to the computer and started looking for bike shops in Parker. There is one shop and it is at the back of a tattoo parlor. There was no answer (imagine that?). The front desk lady was very nice and set up the computer so I could look around for some options. I gave up after about 45 minutes of calling around, and went back to my room. At this point, I figured that if I got to race, it was going to be alright, and if I didn’t get to race, I was just going to have to deal with it. The front desk lady knocks on the door at about 1am. She was thinking about my problem and realized that the maintenance guy (Bobby) has a car phobia and rides his bike everywhere. So she calls him (at 1am!) and tells him about me and asks if I can borrow his helmet, and he says yes. So Brigid and I head out to another hotel, where Bobby is living full time, and pick up his helmet. This is obviously a very kind and good man. This man also smokes like a chimney and spends some time in bars, because the helmet (which, by the way, matched my bike) had a very strong odor of parties it had been to – cigarettes and booze, and Bobby. We got back to our hotel room at 1:30am, and went straight to bed, after the desk lady arranged a 1pm checkout so that I could shower after the race.

We got up at 5:30am and headed down to transition. I racked my bike, made sure that Bobby’s helmet would stay on my head, ate a protein bar, and mused about the decision I had made to cancel my wetsuit reservation with TriSports. There were two of us that opted not to wear a wetsuit for the race – some guy from Tribe Multisports, and me. It was a little chilly in transition, and we had to walk all the way from transition to the beach where the swim started. I finally got to get in the water and I didn’t think it was that bad. Later, one of the other TriGirls told me that she had heard that the water was 65 degrees. The wave started and I headed out to the big orange buoy. I made it around the buoy and headed to the second orange buoy. I made it around that one, and turned in towards shore where I was supposed to be aiming for a big yellow buoy and a big green buoy. There wasn’t a chance in hell of seeing those though, because we were swimming right into the sun. I couldn’t see anything – no other swimmers, no buoys, no boats, nothing. I finally managed to locate a boat and they told me that I was going to have to correct my direction. I did that and finally made it in – and couldn’t get out of the water. There were a million rocks all covered with that slimy stuff and I kept slipping – went down like a ton of bricks three times before I actually made it on to the concrete pad (which was also slimy) and then out of the water. Brigid got a great picture of me doing a face plant in the water, and then one of my fellow competitors helping me up.

I made it through transition, glanced at my watch and was horrified to see that a half hour had passed since I got into the water. That wasn’t what I wanted at all! So I got on my bike and headed out of transition, straight up a nasty hill. I made it up the hill, and at the top realized that I was in my top gear – that would by why getting out of transition took awhile, I guess. So I headed out on the road and passed two people right away. I generally don’t do that, so I was excited. I felt good, and I felt like I was really moving along for the first 8-12 miles, in spite of crappy road and some decent hills. The middle section of the ride just killed me – I wanted to stop and check to see if someone was hanging on to my back tire. I just couldn’t seem to maintain any kind of momentum and there were a couple of nasty hills in there that I don’t remember ever hearing about in the race stuff. Worse, my back had started hurting in a big way. I was very grateful to get across the dam – I had made it more than halfway! This was the first race I have ever gotten to eat while I was on the bike because Ron had found a handlebar mounted bottle holder for me. So I was taking in calories during the whole bike section. Did it make any difference? It sure didn’t feel like it. The third section of the bike was hilly, but there were some good downhills, so I finally felt like I was moving again, but not as fast as I wanted to be moving! I had to stop twice to stretch out my back because I just couldn’t stand it anymore. Finally, I saw the sign for the casino – and I was so grateful. I pushed hard to get back to transition and eventually got there. My computer says that I did the bike section in 2:19:26, and while this is within my personal time limit (I wanted to be under 2:30), I was a little bummed that I wasn’t closer to 2 hours. Here I am finishing the bike course:

I changed into my running shoes and headed out on the run course – gravel, sand, rocks, pebbles, a shrine to a dead person or two, not really my kind of run course. I kept on keeping on, and did do some running during The Five Mile Run That Would Never End, but it was mostly walking. I came around a corner and there was the finish – I almost cried with relief. I was done!

So I think I did the swim in about 24 minutes, the bike in 2:19:26, and the run in about 1:22. This totally disagrees with what is posted on the race website however. According to my watch, my time was 4:11 (I started at 7:51am, and came across the finish line at 12:02pm). My average speed on the bike was 14.85mph. I am pretty happy with how things went, in spite of forgetting the helmet and that kind of thing. It was a good race.


After the race, I made it through the shower and cleaned Bobby's helmet thoroughly. I returned it to the desk clerk and we headed out on the road. It was a five hour drive home and we got home about 7:30pm -- I was so tired! I went to bed about an hour later.