Wildflower Training Weekend

The first thing you need to know is that Wildflower is notorious for being a real asshole of a course. When I did my first tri in 2003, half of our team was training for Wildflower Olympic (3/4 mi swim - 24 mi bike - 6 mi run), and the coaches and mentors would talk about WILDFLOWER in the way that there was that joke on Pete & Pete or some show about your PERMANENT RECORD. That didn't make sense - their naked voices, when discussing it, took on the timbre reserved for ghost stories or penal sentencing. Point being, I've never really been a fan of Wildflower - going, doing, discussing, etc.

At the beginning of this season, I was initially signed up to train just for the half Ironman - Wildflower, in May - and not the full - Vineman, in August. Somewhere along the way I decided to do Vineman, with the added bonus of being able to totally jettison the idea of Wildflower. Let those other suckers deal with demon race. Then, in the course of my strikingly usual not paying attention, I realized there was something called...Wildflower Training Weekend....coming up. But! I could skip it! Because I was not doing Wildflower! My coach and mentor dashed both of those notions in one fell swoop, in one of the most acute, matter of fact shame sessions I've ever experienced, and let me know that I was, in fact, doing both the event and training weekend. What is a superacute shame session? They just give you one sidelong hyper-raised eyebrow, and say, "You're doing it." And you feel SO GROSS about their weird certainty that you do it.

Drove up to Monterey County after work on a Friday, got to camp at about 11 pm, pitched a tent in the dark, climbed into bed, and woke up at 6 am in the freezing. Breakfast cooked by other teammates for their fundraiser - a luxury that will not exist on race day. Drove down to the race start, pulled on a wet suit, and jumped into the lake at 7 am. As we treaded water in a clump at the end of the dock, our Coach Paul, also in the water, did this thing that he does occassionally, that's incredibly humbling. He reminds us of TNT's mission, the reason we are all fundraising, and ostensibly the reason we are all involved. He said, roughly, this, as we gently churned the water: "You guys. Look around you. The sun is still coming up over the hills. It's 7 am. Most of your friends aren't even up yet, and you're in a lake so that someday kids in hospitals can be in a lake. It's a really amazing thing that you're doing, and I feel lucky to be a part of it." He said a little more, but the point is the strange humility of being told you're doing something amazing, or even just genuinely helpful. It's the cartoon time traveler's surprise when his quantum shuttle randomly smashes a Lilliputian dictator, and he spends the rest of the episode posing for statues against his will. Right, not quite, but it's someone telling you this thing you are doing - for whatever jumble of motivations you have - is a truly inspiring thing to THEM, who is a major source of your inspiration. It just makes you pause. And then keep flapping your arms & legs to stay afloat.

The swim was actually surprisingly arduous - I haven't been in major open water in a couple years, and I had forgotten how much energy you expend just navigating, trying to head straight in a huge lake, and scanning awkwardly for the buoys. I felt myself just zone out and swim along, which I'm prone to, swimming being the only leg where I feel comfortable and distinctly understand my limits and abilities. We swam about a mile - half of what I'll need to do in Vineman - and I realized my challenge would be staying focused on keeping my speed up, rather than just doing Zen strokes. I've realized I'm afraid to push, and just do a lot of finding a comfortable speed and maintaining / surviving the course. I'm terrified I'll push and then deplete my reserves, though I have a growing fear I'll hold back and then be left with extra energy. AND then I have the growing realization that that is literally not possible, reminding myself I'm doing a Death Race. The Zen stroking sounds like not a bad idea, when we go full circle.

There is one other thing I forgot about tri swimming: Swim Starts. Meaning tons of people packed into a tiny chunk of water, getting the whistle and then beating the crap out of each other until the pack is thinned out enough to just swim. Here's a tri-community famous commercial thatz funny cuz its true:


I'll talk about the bike in a separate post, since I'm a man now, after that beast.