Wildflower: The Bike

I was pretty excited to get out of the water and onto the bike, since I felt good. Before my swim start, wandering around in the transition area, I had almost been run over by some pro's doing their bike-to-swim transition - for them all it consisted of was ripping of their wetsuit, clipping on their helmet, grabbing their bike and running to the bike start line - their shoes were clipped onto their pedals, and I guess they just jam their feet in once they are on. This is nuts, not to mention sockless. Have I said already that I think one of the coolest things about this sport is that you are in the same race as the best people in the world at it? Not that I would say we are competing. They are just there, being freaks, quite close, and that's interesting.

So. I ran to my rack, I ripped off my suit, pulled my jersey on, socks on, shoes on, gloves on, sunglasses on, helmet on, grabbed my bike and ran. James and Justin were right at the mounting line - neat again! Here's a picture they took! I'm the one in blue looking way more action-y than whoever THAT is next to me.

Weird energy took me up the first mini-hill standing and through the first mile, just until I began the ascent up Beach Hill. Then I did what I normally do when met with scary hills on the bike: can't stop my eyes from going all big and scared, wonder how I'm going to make it, put my head down, and start pedaling. Look, sorry reader, but Fuck the Guy who put a 1 mile climb + less severe but still WHAT climbing for another 3 miles after that right after I get out of the water. DID YOU SEE? I SWAM A BUNCH? WHAT'S YOUR ISSUE?
Point being that even though I powered up Beach on the practice weekend, on the day I actually pulled over, put my right foot on land for 30 seconds, WTF'd a couple times, and kept going. WhatEVER.

The special thing about being a good swimmer and a mediocre cyclist is getting passed every 5-10 seconds for basically the entirety of the bike course. Meh. The weather was nice, I tried to enjoy myself, and I was averaging about 1.5 - 2 mph faster than I had a month before. There's just not much to complain about.

As the miles counted up to 41 and the dreaded Nasty Grade, my brain got a bit cloudy. I was doing a lot of negotiating with myself - I essentially accepted that I would be walking my bike up Nasty, but left a small sliver of a chance that I might surprise myself. I think this sort of giving up was the only option I had besides berating myself for not believing in myself outright, and so was some perverse respite and good mental survival option. Have I not explained Nasty Grade and the black cloud it built in my brain? Here's a course elevation:
You don't need to understand much to see that piece of crap matterhorn towards the end. GROSS. They - the tri community, universally - call it Nasty Grade, no article. That's its name, it's personified. You know the only soulless things that get names like people? Demons. The point is I was ready to walk the last bit of Nasty.

The way Nasty works is this: you start climbing, and its a good, consistent grade for about 3 miles - you (if you are are me) can go about 10-11 mph up this - down from a usual 17 or so. The breeze drops away, so there is suddenly no noise but your gears, your breathing, the leather of your shoes heaving, and your inner monologue. The road winds, and as you turn corners, the pack of cyclists goes in and out of view - a scattered mass of backs in colored jerseys, rhythmically humping up and down as they slowly power up ground you have not quite reached, which part of you doubts you will reach as they have reached, which part of you takes their having reached as proof that you can reach, a scattered mass that understands you but is not doing this with you, that you are part of having your very private struggle. The experience is not unique, but the struggle makes it very specific, and this sense of going in and out of individuality and community is strange - I think it is a pendulum of continuance as much as the muscles.

Nasty turns a few times, flattens out slightly a few times - has a water stop just before the last big surprising turn, where kids are handing out water bottles and high fiving, which is as cartoonishly heartening as if I were a marooned WWII paratrooper being given bread by village children. The kids really helped. JESUS I KEEP SWITCHING TENSES AND VOICE. That's a sign of trauma, right??

So the real dirtbag thing on Nasty is there is this steep climb that leads to a sharp left - its one of those turns that disappears off and to the left in a way that just has to be a crest, it has a telephone pole at the top that looks so alone that the wires can only be falling off to where you can't see, and this. just. has. to be. the end. You ride up, using the pole as your goal - when you get there, you're there, you're there, and you crest and turn...and there is this unbelievably straight, dishearteningly steep...climb...still ahead of you. Betrayal is palpable, and the wrinkles in your brain become question marks - why is this happening? What haven't you proved? Why was that turn built like a trick ending? So this is where I had told myself I could walk. I knew the trick turn was there, and I was convinced I would be tricked by it. I turned the corner, and my memory of the sight of this climb and the actual sight of this climb left their red and blue corners of the ring, ran towards each other and became the 3D knowledge of the climb that I was really on. While those reckonings met, I found myself still pedaling, all the heaving backs ahead of me pedaling...I don't know why I didn't stop. The climb was surely not what I had made it in my head, in weeks of anxiety; not that it wasn't a beast, but not the beast I had expected. A guy in a speedo on the side of the road holding an inflatable woman told me I was the most beautiful girl in the world, and I'll tell ya - platitude as pure jet fuel - the power of just a bit of humor to put the worst suffering into perspective! I could see a teammate up ahead, powering up standing in her pedals, and I was climbing at 4.5 mph - a month earlier I'd been barely managing to keep my bike upright at 3 mph. I have no idea where the will comes from, but it bubbled up, and like anonymous cyclists had called out to me in the same spot a month earlier - Nasty didn't last forever.

The rest of the ride was still climbing, still struggle, and not comfortable at all. But it just doesn't need recounted - that is, my self doesn't need to remember and relive those last miles, because they weren't where proof happened. The hill was the hill and the hill was what I made it, and I got up both.

Wildflower: The Swim

I'm not one to waste an accidental wrap up, so I started a new post for this chunk of the race. BECAUSE I'M A WRITING / TALKING MACHINE and I WANT YOU TO KNOW EVERYTHING I EVER THOUGHT OR EXPIERENCED AT ALL ON THE DAY.

Okay, check it out: I love swimming. I have no issues with this part of the triathlon, and long for the day I can feel the same way about the others. Last night while doing my mile and a half in the pool, I spent a lot of time with this thought going around and around: "Man, this shit is so EASY! It's like walking. Seriously, I could do this forever. Seriously. It's like if this pool had a sidewalk, I'd be on it. On a Sunday afternoon." This might TECHNICALLY be referred to as hubris, but if it makes you feel better, the swimming is the shortest part of any tri, so my victory is practically defined by its brevity. Did that sentence make sense? I've had a beer.
The POINT is I'm actually on the fence about making a bike jersey that says "I'd rather be swimming."

Because I wasn't able to get to camp early on Friday, I wasn't able to check out the swim course (a big 1 mile rectangle in the water) with the rest of the team. This meant that when the pro men started at 8 am, I was up on a hill watching them to see where the first turn was - after that it would just be a matter of following the buoys.
Tri swim starts are the strangest thing - a combinaton of running, diving, clawing, swimming and churning that has almost nothing to do with your actual swimming ability. How does standing in a crush of 100 people and then swim-sparring with them 'til the pack thins out enough for you to actually just SWIM translate to "I'm better at this athletic skill than you?" Aberrant but I suppose a space shuttle of adrenalin.

My wave - Women 25 to 29, I think - wasn't until 9:15, so I still had another 45 minutes of truely aimless anxiety, and a good 30 minutes after that of directed anxiety, standing near the swim start with my teammates. We stood on the boat launch ramp and watched most of our guy teammates make their way out of the water, running up the ramp while stripping out of their wetsuit and over to their bikes. People looked ROUGH coming up that ramp, which was a nice icing on my jitters. But I should say, I loved standing with my wet suit half on, my goggles and cap tucked into the flap where the upper half of the suit hung from my stomach, recognizing what it feels like to be waiting for a whistle. I loved it the same way I love wearing a walkie on set, or a headset backstage - it's just the edge of pomp and the accoutrement of a culture that means you're part of something, and having an experience that not everyone gets to have. It's so fun.

I mentioned zipping up as a ritual before - I've taken too many dramaturgy and performance history courses not to consciously relish the costume changes of tri, most especially this first one. If endurance sport has a locus, it must be the body itself - through water and over roads, it's the one true & constant place where the phsyical runs into the mental, and you find how they are related, allowing each other their possibilities. Zipping up a full body wetsuit, in contact with all of yourself, is a tremendous feeling of being held in - everything that will make the day possible is in containment and waiting. Then you stand, covered in neoprene but with the most basic silhouette possible, a strange accessorized basic body, with your extremities and head au naturel. And then you get one more ritual! Putting on the cap and the goggles - and then fiddling with them. Now you look alien at best and goofy at worst, and you are and aren't your desk-sitting self.

My pack had green caps to distinguish us from the groups before (yellow, Men 50+) and after (lavender, Women 30 - 35). After the group ahead was signaled off, we wandered down to the water line, and were given five minutes to swim to the end of the dock, swim back, and stand back on shore. This is nice, the first phsyical activity you have had in 18 intense hours of thinking accutely about physical activity, and you get to doggy paddle a bit with the other laydeez. ALSO THIS IS THE BEST TIME TO PEE IN YOUR WETSUIT. What? Yes. You can do it in the race if you want, but this is my preferred time. It helps get a bit warmed up, it's weird enough to be a little distracting, and it's an immense relief. Dirty secrets of the tri community EXPOSED.

What does it mean that by the seventh paragraph I'm still not in the water? OKAY THEY MADE THE WHISTLE AND WE STARTED SWIMMING, all hundred or so of us. I could see the first giant triangle buoy where we were to turn right, and by the time I got there the crush had effectively thinned out - still got a few folks who couldn't orientate, and which I spent a lot of time trying to get on one side or the other of, but mostly it was an open and straight shot. Except that - oh man wow was that long lap out a long lap. I would raise my head to look ahead at the next five or so buoys and could only ever see about..maybe 200 yards out, and was sure I was looking at the next turn. About four times I thought I was coming up on the last buoy, and then I'd get there and find another four buoys peeking out from behind it - knowing not only was I not turning yet, but I'd have to do the same distance again on the lap back. The upside was how FRESH the water was - getting it in my mouth was like cracking open a new and nicely refridgerated bottle of water, it was so clean. I found myself drifting mentally a bit, just enjoying myself - I would start to think about the bike or run, and would have to pull myself back to the swim, and then I'd realize I was auto-swimming, and then I'd wonder if I wasn't pushing my pace as hard as I should. And then you know what? I'D GO EASY ON MYSELF - this is the only part where I have the luxury of it being easy enough that the insane thought I should be going faster (that it's a remote possibility) even occurs, so I try and let myself have a little FUN. It's great!

I passed a fair few yellow caps, which I have to say was encouraging, no matter what the means. By the time I rounded the last house boat to start heading to shore, there was a thin pack of about 8 other girls, and 3 of us got really bunched up and were gently jostling to get ahead for about the last 100 yards. When my fingers finally scraped mud and I got to follow down to bottom with my feet I was chuffed to feel like I still had energy, and plenty of it...the racers around me seemed like they'd had it taken out of them - I take my smarmy superiority where I can, thanks. The strongest memory I have is of my teammate Caroline calling my name from the dock as I was taking my cap off - I saw the camera and realized I needed to smile - I was having fun! And I do love the picture that resulted. I ran up the ramp, stripping my wet suit off, got to see James and Justin and get a weirdo picture snapped while they yelled "Take it off!", and head for my bike, maybe trying not to be sad that the best part was over.

In the end I did the swim in 35 minutes, which is respectable as hell and put me 25th in my age group (out of 80). I can deal with that! I dunno! That time is better than I thought! See the exclamation marks? Get ready for those to go away....bike time...

WILDFLOWER FOR REAL OK OK OK

Weird! My stomach went right back to my throat just starting this blog! I'm nervous to sit and recapture it all, nervous about what a sprawl it might become. Wait! I have an idea! Resultcap GO:
This is a rad thing. Under 8 hours makes me totally happy. The Pros did it in four, which is almost - really, quite literally - unfathomable. HOW would you even fit that much into that amount of time? So if I'm only taking double the time some genuinely insane people take to do it, I can sleep at night. Great, now that I feel proud again, let's recount.

I'm skipping all the stuff about camping except for saying that my friends Justin + James came with me, and that MADE the weekend. A.) Having people I could count on to cook for me, set up tents, complain to, and get hugs from = priceless. B.) Having faces to scan the race for really gives you something to look forward to. C.) Letting people from your real life witness what all your hard work has been for is gratifying. D.) They are funny boyz. Justin in particular gets my personal MVP for seeming interested in the training since the fourth day I really knew him, incessantly calling me 'Ironman' and thereby casting a general support-shame-rahrah aura over my would-be procrastinations, dealing with the fact that I've taken his interest for permission to verbally crap all over him whenever I want, and then actually coming to Wildflower. It means a lot. Here is a picture from when he accompanied me for awhile on the run - I gave him a medal to make up for flipping him off. It was Mile 9!!!
That was fun, no? Okay, let's finish this post. And by finish I mean I am about to write A TON. Settle in.

The night before the race we met as a team after dinner. Wait, I should say: I had a sausage, and started to drink a beer, and was spotted. I wasn't really sure how bad consuming those things was for me, until it was pointed out that I'd been drinking water until my pee was clear all week - a reminder that almost everyone else pays more attention to the vagueries of nutrition, gadgets and planning than I do, which in turn made me believe them that the sausage was going to "screw up [my] stomach" the following morning. Okay. That's nuts, but at this point I'm willing to do almost anything to make Hell Race easier. I might be ignorant but I'm also compliant!

So. We met as a team after the Pasta Feed, and our coaches said some of the best things I've ever heard. The reasons I'm doing this seemed to really be what was on the table for all of us, and I think had less to do with athleticism than even I would normally imagine. I've always been drawn to endurance activity, but have never meditated so heavily on what it's about as the past few months, and Coach Paul articulated it beautifully. He told us that the event - any Iron event, but specifically the brutality of the Wildflower course - was about patience. The cogs in my brain slipped into gear, hearing that, the way I had wanted them to when vainly reading The Tao of Pooh or Siddhartha as a teenager - is THIS Zen? Is that what this is? Is this being in the moment? Will I lose track of my brainself?
He went on - those of us assembled at those two tables had signed up because we wanted to explore something about ourselves - and he didn't specify what. We all heard and knew it was true, and this is when I felt my head slowly start moving back and forth - slow barely side to sides - while my stomach buzzed and my brain tingled. I noticed my teammate Allan, the one most directly in my line of sight, just staring. We were all alone together, and our tables were still. There was no false solemnity, but there was a gravity as we each pulled into ourselves. I took turns being aware of the hat on my head, and the grass below my chair, and the texture of the plastic molded table, imagining the ride, remembering the practice weekend.
Paul kept talking - the bike didn't start until Mile 41, we should be eating and resting as much as we could in the miles leading up to that - while we were out on the back half of the course, pedaling through the 30's, we should spend some time with ourselves. One more time he didn't elaborate on a resonant phrase. At this distance, two weeks after the event, I've conflated hearing him say this with the visual I imagined when he said it with the visuals I actually saw on the ride - I'm not sure which is which. But I found, starting in that moment and continuing into the next day and now as I reflect, a new part of me where I can go. There is a room in a house in one of my favorite books - The Man in the Ceiling by Jules Feiffer - where the mother character goes to do her illustrations, and be away from the world - she calls it her Sanctum Sanctorum. The Latin literally means "Holy of Holies", which is a bit...sanctimonious...but when you take that and divide it by the realistic-domestic textures of a den or workroom, I think its a lovely way to describe the rough-hewn place in yourself where you get to know yourself. Now I've wallpapered mine with the countryside going by at bicycle pace.

Got up at 5:15, though I was mostly awake and ready to be so by 4:45, despite sleeping on the ground and getting up in the semi-cold. I heard some of my teammates saying the same, so I'm assuming this is wakefulness cum jitters, or a micro-version of what I'd been going through all week - you're ready or at least want to be doing the damn thing, but the realities of time and calendars don't allow it. Ate some super carby (learning!) cereal and a banana, filled my 5 water bottles - most of the rest of the team did their water bottles the night before, but I NEED something to do in the morning or I'll go crazy. Got worried and ate another banana, then got worried I'd eaten too much. Then got worried I'd get hungry waiting at the start, so I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I subsequently forgot about for the next four days, at which point I had an anxiety time capsule sandwich rock. Then I went to the bathroom. Then I walked around. Then I touched my bike. Then I walked around. Then I then I then I. Too much time!

We biked down as a team at 6:30 to the transition area, and I went to pick up my packet - with race number + stickers, timing chip / ankle bracelet, and silly schwag. I found my racking position, among the other 2,000 riders - here's a good shot of the scope. I set up my little transition area: towel on the ground, backpack holding everything I didn't or would only occasionally need - the clothes I took off and would put on after, comfy shoes, iPod, bike tools, extra socks, the sandwich. On the towel, in the order I would need them: sunblock; Body Glide + PAM (cooking spray) for my neck, ankles and wrists to help get the wetsuit off easily; goggles and swim cap; bike shoes with socks stuffed in them; bike jersey (my bike shorts were already on under my wet suit); in my helmet were my bike gloves, cycling cap and sunglasses; my running jersey with race number pinned on and my digital watch. What a silly sport that needs so many things. I checked my stuff twice, decided I would go into panic attack if I checked it again, and put my ipod on to take a wander to Body Marking.
Rituals really help me, and I think body marking is the thing that most tickles me about tri. You walk up to a volunteer stranger, tell them your number (1907!), and they write it on your upper left arm, your upper right arm, your lower left thigh, your lower right thigh, your left hand, your right hand. When they write on my hand I think how similar and different the moment is to getting your hand stamped or written on to get into a club, and I reflect on the compartments of my specific existence. They ask your age (25!) and they write it on your left calf. Then they ask my favorite part, favorite like finding a friend's diary: they ask if you are a pro. If you say yes, they are going to mark you accordingly. Something about you, standing there in your shorts and dumb t-shirt with your ipod on and smelling like sunscreen, isn't totally refutable out of hand as a professional triathlete. You have the opportunity to GO FOR IT, and you want to. But you don't. I amble away, and do little hops to my music, and watch the boys start to head to the swim start. It's 8 am, and the only rituals left before I'll be working too hard to note them are zipping up the wet suit and standing in a pack at the shore.

Procrastination via Dreams

I have a giant post to write about WILDFLOWER, but instead I'm recording my two worst anxiety dreams....the Wildflower post will be heady, I need a couple hours to relive it.

CHEESE WHEELS
This dream struck about...hmm Tuesday before Wildflower, so five days prior. It started as a run-of-the-mill anxiety dream, with the bike course refreshing endlessly out in front of me, ineffective pedaling, hills growing cartoonishly steeper in front of my eyes. Eventually, I found myself on the backside of the course - hitting the course up a month early to help visualization also makes your crappy dreams more accurate and frightening - amongst the wildflowers. The more I pedaled, the more I felt like I was going nowhere; assuming I had a flat, I looked down at my tires to find they were made of cheese, and the more I pedaled, the more the friction melted them away. So I pulled over into the technicolor flora, put my bike upsidedown, and had a hard think. I wanted to CHANGE the tires to wheels NOT made of cheese and finish the race, but I also wanted to EAT the wheels. I cried on the side of the dream road.
Ding!
The team said they were going to nickname me Cheese Wheels after hearing about this, but NOTHING DOING. I'm as nicknameless as the day I was born.


COACH FIGHT
This is actually becoming its own genre of dream, as this is about the third like it I've had. Ostensibly it's about my insecurity that my coaches LOVE me, and how much I want to please them and hop around like a kid and have them love my ebullience; on a "Oh, that's for real" level, its about how I feel I am not as dedicated to the training as I should be, how I make excuses, and how I beat myself up for this even while unconscious. HEAVY.
The actual dream was a practice we were apparently having in a Van Goghian cypress forest - the scenery was painterly, the sky textured 3D with gesso and painter's medium, the field crowded with looming trees. We were all there for bike practice, and had all our stuff, but I had forgotten my helmet. There was enough of a delay for one reason or another that I apparently had time to ride back to my house to get it, but I was over a barrel about wanting to do so - I don't know why. So I whined and whined and asked everyone whether they thought I should go get it, taking up the time I needed to go get it, and knowing it. Finally Coach Paul took me aside and in words I can't even remember enough to paraphrase, but remember the sharp sting of acutely, told me all I ever do is make excuses; to grow up and stop. The dream ends there as far as I know.
I feel pretty bummed out to even relate how lamely I treat myself when the answer is to just stop being lame and then lamer in retribution, but....that quandary lies smack at the nexus of WHY. Why I signed up for this in the first place. The WHY that I circle around while I'm out on the course. In all things - I think I can, and largely I know I can - and I still back off where it really counts. WHY.
I should say that I had this dream on Monday night - two days after doing the hardest thing I've ever done, and being pretty proud of it, too. Back to the grind.


WOW SORRY DUDES
Next post is VICTORY post I sweeeeeaauuhrrrrr