I’ve been sitting here for a few minutes, trying to put a label on my Rochester Olympic Triathlon experience today. Sometimes we do things that are obviously good, fun, or successful. Sometimes we fail, have a hard day, or know we could do better. Well, I can’t quite boil Rochester down to just “good” or “bad”, so I’ll just tell you about it and maybe by the end I will figure it out.

I guess, in my ideal world, I would judge a race on whether I did my best and how my performance compared to my training. In that world, I would say that the race was difficult but that I still finished each leg of the race in the time that I would have guessed given my training. When I think that way, I am satisfied.

When I look at the race results, I finished 52 out of those 62 women. In my division, I finished 13th out of 13. Hmmm… that doesn’t feel so good. Does that mean that I’m not good at this and that I didn’t try hard enough? I wish I was faster and that I could say that I came out at the top of my division. I’m coming to grips with the idea that it’s just not going to happen for me. I’m training two hours a day, 6 days a week. I think I’m going to have to be satisfied with the idea that I lined up with those other women and that I was proud to be a member of that group. I’m still working on that line of thinking… to be honest I wish I had placed a little higher in my division.

In the end, I guess I would characterize myself as being satisfied with my race. I now realize that the Olympic distance is much more difficult than the Sprint. During the Sprint race I was able to keep myself going on adrenaline, but the Olympic course is a mental and physical challenge. I’m glad that I did it, but I’m also relieved that my next two races are shorter. I’ve only been training in all three sports for a couple months, so doing the Olympic early in the season was a probably overly optimistic. I’d like to try another Olympic next summer, after I’ve had a full year of training like this. Hopefully next time I’ll be a little bit faster and have a little more fun. For now, though, this is just fine.

My triathlon last weekend pointed out some things I need to work on. My number one problem during the race was my wetsuit. As I complained about at length, I couldn’t get the wetsuit off over my calves. The wetsuit that I rented was a couple years old and had reinforced knees. This area wasn’t very stretchy and resulted in me being frustrated during T1. In my own defense, I don’t think my calves are extra large. I thought that the numbers on my arms and legs were cool, so Mike took a picture of my calves. Here’s a picture so you can judge for yourself:

Marathon racing, for me, is a lot like a roller coaster ride. The high excitement of signing up for a race is like being at the top of the big hill that starts every roller coaster. This hill creates the momentum and excitement that will be needed to take riders up and over all of the big hills, curves, and loops along the journey back to the station. At the end of the ride, everyone is smiling and instantly wants to get back in line and do it again.

With a marathon, though, there is no getting back in line to race again the next day. While some of my running friends have amazing abilities to recover and race again within a couple weeks, my body just can’t take it. I tried jumping back into training for the Disney Marathon right after the Twin Cities Marathon and it didn’t work for me. Knowing that my body is going to need a break, I am anticipating Post Race Depression (PRD and yes, I made this up so don’t try to Google it).

In an effort to avoid the post race let down, I signed up for my first triathlon. I’ll be doing the Buffalo Sprint Triathlon on June 7th. It will give me something new and different to look forward to right after the race. I’m figuring that the marathon training will take care of the running, and that I can do the training that I need for the swim and bike while I taper and recover from the marathon. The swim is .25 miles, the bike is 13 miles, and the run is 3 miles.

Since the race is June 7th, I declared yesterday, April 7th, as my first official day of triathlon training. Being a female, I kicked off my training season by going shopping! I decided I better get my wet suit situation figured out since the water will still be very cold on June 7th. Luckily, Gear West is only a couple miles from my house. Everything in Gear West just looks like so much darn fun!

I’m not really sure what I’m looking for in a wet suit, so I decided to rent one. For $40, I can use one of theirs and see how I like it. I’ve done some other pre-season shopping over the last couple months. My husband, Mike, had aero bars put on my road bike for Valentine’s Day (very romantic!). I bought some top of the line bike shorts which I love, and some tri shorts which I haven’t tried out yet. I have some nifty goggles and a sweet road bike from last season.

Hopefully I’ll think this triathlon thing is a lot of fun because I signed up to do an Olympic distance on June 28. I’m thinking that both of those races will be enough to keep me motivated and that I’ll avoid PRD. It’s going to be hard to stay depressed while I’m busy planning and doing two new activities, and of course, there is always the cool new gear to cheer me up!

I’m already regretting that I said that I was going to take on Jennifer Lopez’s triathlon time. Note to self: check a person’s finishing time before mouthing off a challenge. I’ve never done a triathlon, so maybe I’m wrong, but unfortunately for me her time doesn’t look too bad. Here is the breakdown:

In November of 2007, I was in New York City to watch my husband, Mike, run the NYC Marathon. The day before the race, we walked to Central Park to watch the Men’s Olympic Trails and were stunned at the speed and athleticism of the racers. We didn’t hear about the tragedy until later that day, so we left the park in awe of the athletes and inspired by the pursuit of their dream to go to the Olympics. The next day, I cheered Mike on as he reached his goal of breaking the 4 hour mark. He did this only four weeks after running the Twin Cities Marathon in record heat. At mile 10 of the race, Lance Armstrong, an inspiration to millions of cancer survivors, ran right in front of me. I saw Paula Radcliffe, who had a baby the previous year, lead the pack of elite women. Not far behind them was my son’s Cross Country coach, a local woman about my age and running just minutes behind the world record holder. That day, I saw countless people of all shapes, sizes and abilities run past me and achieve their goal. It was enough to bring me close to tears.

So, given that entire weekend of being witness to a thousand dreams, what did I take away as my primary motivation for my first marathon? Katie Holmes. Katie Holmes gave birth in April 2006 and completed the marathon just 18 months later in NYC. Of all the things I saw that day, for some reason I became obsessed with her time of 5:29:58. All through my training for the Fargo Marathon, people would ask me what was my goal and I would always answer the same, “To beat Katie Holmes.” Why? Her real-person time of 5:29 was inspiring mostly because it was so average. This wasn’t like Lance Armstrong finishing under 3 hours, or even Oprah running a respectable 4:29. Katie’s time was that of a real person… a real mom of a toddler with a real life and a real body with real limits. In fact, having never run a marathon myself, I thought it was on the slow side. Yes, I was quite sure I could crush it. For goodness sakes, even if I had to walk, at least I could beat Katie Holmes.

So what happened? Well, I did finish over 30 minutes faster than her, but unlike her, I was not able to appear in high heels at my husband’s movie premier later that evening. No, I laid in bed for several hours, limped to Applebee’s for dinner, then limped back to bed. No high heels for this girl. So, while technically I beat her, I think it would be fair to say it was pretty darn close.

This past fall, I was minding my own business and training for another race. Wouldn’t you know that another celebrity had to go out, mere months after delivering twins no less, and complete a triathlon. Curse you, Jennifer Lopez! Get ready celebrities, I’m bringing on Round Two. Rochester Triathlon- you are on my schedule and I plan to crush JLo and her luscious booty! (Men, get your mind out of the gutter.)