Peasantman Triathlon: A Tribute to Two Triathlon Badasses

Dirty Harry, the original badass.

In starting this post, I logically felt the need to check the definition of “badass” on Urban Dictionary to verify that my friends are indeed badasses.  The top definition of badass according to this clearly reputable website is “ultra-cool motherf***er”.  Yes, We all know that I use that particular word freely, but I am going to refrain from putting it in print. Examples of badasses, again according to Urban Dictionary, are Dirty Harry and Jules Winnfield.  Given that my Dirty Harry collection is on permanent standby for bad days and that I cross stitched a good friend a picture of Jules from Pulp Fiction saying “speak English motherf**er” for Christmas, I think it is safe to say that (1) this is a perfect definition and (2) the two women/triathlete in my life that I am dedicating this blog to qualify as badasses.

Kristin and I have been the first central NY residents to do an open water swim for the past two seasons. We like to tell ourselves that this makes us not wimps, but in reality this probably makes us extremely stupid. But either way, we clearly survived.

Peasantman was my last race before moving to Massachusetts to kick start a do-over in my life as a scientist. To say I was not enthusiastic about racing would be a complete understatement of what I was feeling.  But given that I stopped to ponder my life during the swim portion of the last two races, I felt like I was at least entering this race at a step above that. And so this is where the two badasses come in. Without going into too much detail, because I am inherently uncomfortable with emotions and feelings, I have spent most of the last year re-evaluating my life, and when most of the dust had settled, Kristin White and Jennie Hansen turned out to both be rather awesome as **** (and this phrase is actually a subtle reference to a Green Day Album of the same title, see here). Two incredibly different individuals, minus the badass triathlete factor, but I am lucky enough to have both of them in my life. So why would I mention this in reference to Peasantman, well, they both know exactly how to motivate me, at this race specifically and in general. Jennie and I have the same basic strategy for races, approach the swim with happy, calm thoughts to survive until the real race begins; think of people that make you angry on the bike; and then get to the run and all is good because it is the run. Having said that, I also emulate Jennie in telling myself not to be an asshole in the swim; getting dropped by other people and swimming sadly off the back seemingly  makes you an asshole. And then this brings us to Kristin, she is the only person in my life who is actually allowed to make fun of my swimming handicap and that is primarily because I know she will take down anyone else who tries to mock my ability. I love this. We also have forced each other through many a long run where neither of us could talk simply because that would require more effort. And during the run of races, when I am starting to run out of gas, I can hear her first telling me that I can run like the wind off the bike and then, if things continue to deteriorate, I hear her saying that I need to not be a wimp. I swear that fear of her making fun of me for being a wimp on the run has put me on the podium in most races this year. So there you have it, there are other things I always think about while racing that I will likely never share, but these two ladies certainly counted for a lot when I hopped in the water to do my last race as a New York resident.

This is what happens when you conclude an awful 5 hour ride and then say something that sounds more or less like “well, training cannot possibly get worse today, so I might as well go for a run.” Turns out, training can get worse when you make stupid statements like that.

And so the swim.  To give a little background to my positioning and thought process at the start of the swim, aside from my general “why is there water in front of me” attitude, I had a bit of an accident two weeks before this race.  See picture, but long story short, I broke a bone in my face above the nasal bone and had to have the skin glued back together. Oops.  Ah, as long as I am giving shout outs to Kristin and Jennie…my initial response to this accident was to run back home after failing to understand why the cars kept stopping and staring at me even after I said I was “fine”…and then rather than look in the mirror I texted Jennie brilliantly with “I refuse to look in the mirror because I had an accident and I am worried I may have to go to the emergency room.”  If you do not look, it is not real? And then, after looking and receiving verification from Jennie that it was as bad as anticipated, I sent a text to Kristin as my default local person for emergencies to say that I needed a ride to the ER.  Unfortunately, Kristin was in the midst of her own never ending 6 hour workout and so her response to hearing my text notification was to ignore it thinking that I was just rubbing it in that I was done already. Ha! Nope, not the case 🙂

I am posting a picture of the swim start because for the first time more or less ever I think I actually somewhere among this first large group of people Will wonders never cease.

So for this swim, I strategically positioned myself at the very outside of everyone with the thought that getting kicked in the face with a broken frontal bone was perhaps not smart.  But then again, do I ever make truly smart decisions while racing?  The race started and less than a minute in, I heard the wise words of Jennie saying “f**k it and stop being an asshole”, so with that I did not panic (I said these things while still sticking to the original strategy of thinking of happy thoughts), decided I did not care about the broken bone, and found a pair of hard kicking feet to draft off of. The downside to this was that the man I chose to draft off of swam to the wrong set of buoys, that was unfortunate, but on the plus side, this was still faster than I could have done going into the current solo.  And then on the way back, with the current, I figured I could take it from there and I left that man in the dust!  I just gave myself a selfie high five for this. If you have read how my last two swims have gone, this was a well deserved selfie high five. Not exactly a best swim time wise, but to come out of the water 9th out of 36 for the women and 28th out of 103 overall, I was admittedly prettyexcited. And I did not fall backwards while trying to get out of my wetsuit as I did during my last race. I think this deserves a much smaller selfie high five.

The Mennonite women in Penn Yan also qualify as badasses in my eyes, as they rode over the surrounding hills with ease, in 91 degree heat, while wearing dresses.

The bike, not much to say here, I was more or less alone the entire ride, just me and the volunteers who could not seem to hand me a bottle at any speed greater than 15 mph. The highlight of the bike was that I got to pass a horse and carriage!  Yup, definitely a first. And watching the Mennonite women ride bikes in the opposite direction was sort of awesome. The fact that I was so aware of this does not really help the general sense that I did not bring my A game to the bike yet again. At the same time, I did not exactly bring my B game either. I am including a picture of my Garmin data with this blog. Not because there was anything spectacular here, but because you can perhaps tell why I ended up with one of the faster bike splits despite a not so great wattage. In the Garmin profile, you can clearly see where someone turned on the oven…and with the oven turned on..off went my power and my speed. I am not overly keen on heat regardless, but I also had in my mind that I did not want to suck on the run because sucking on the run during a half or full ironman is just miserable (I suspect several people nodded in agreement upon reading this).

Half way through the bike, someone decided to turn on the heat. And henceforth my power and speed plummeted from upper end tempo to just riding along.

I rarely include pictures of me actually racing, so here you have it, me finishing up a long, absurdly hot day. The look on my face says “I cannot wait to get the cookie in my car.”

The happy faces of two people who firmly believe that ice cream can indeed be considered a meal.

Ah yes, the run, what should be my bread and butter. Did I mention it was hot, it was too damn hot. The bread and butter were more like toast and butter. Thankfully, I had armed myself with gummy sour lobsters provided to me by Jennie. On the downside to this, I dropped approximately half of these lobsters all over the course. If you know me, this is really not that uncommon, I always drop something. So in this race, if you saw the lobster, it was an indicator that I was there. I see this as being sort of like the plastic lobsters that they hide at Trader Joes.  Anyways, the volunteers were not overly keen on actually handing out water and ice (and apparently there was coke that was hidden from sight?), but eventually I found my rhythm despite the heat and lack of hydration. And the last 3 miles, I picked up the pace, with the thought of earning the ice cream I was planning on getting with Jennie later in the week (ice cream and cookies and sandwiches are fantastic race motivators). I truly thought that I ran slow at this race, every time I saw the women running behind me, I could have sworn they were gaining on me. As it happens, I apparently had no grasp on reality at that point of the race since I ended up with the 3rd fastest run split overall. I think a little bit of delusion is to be expected on a 91 degree day.

Mmmmmm….Ice cream.

I crossed the line in 2nd for the women (5th overall), promptly grabbed my award from the queen (yes, there was an actual queen waiting to hand out awards), and hobbled quickly to the transition to grab my things and return to the cookie I had stocked in my car (see above for insight on food motivation) and the never ending misery of packing up a 3 story house. I admit that I would have liked the win at this race, but sometimes you just need to call a spade a spade. I knew the girl who beat me was also out for the win, and on this day, she definitely handled the heat on the bike infinitely better than I did and just out-biked me in general…and I still do not want to talk about me versus her during the swim. Having said that, I am going to call this race a substantial personal victory.  My swim time still stood out like a sore thumb among the other race leaders, but a much less swollen sore thumb than usual; I may have given up a little on the bike, but I raced how I thought I needed to race; and I fought the good fight on the run fueled by gummy lobsters.

Gummy lobsters = supreme race nutrition!

I am coming to terms with the fact that the move to Boston more or less marks the end to my racing season before Kona.  My coach is happy about this since (1) he did not want me to race again anyways and (2) he believes I have done well this season from marathons-triathlons with 4th place overall as my “worst” finish. I however am not as happy. Not only because I could have used one more race to work out the kinks and chase down some of my demons, but because I already miss the two badasses who keep me motivated when the going gets tough, and I mean that as applies to more than just racing. Thankfully, I have already scoped out solid runs/rides for when they visit (there are good places to swim, but that still involves water).  And I will most certainly be looking to them for support as I head into Ironman Hawaii. And on a final note, if you are reading this and do not understand why exactly Jennie and Kristin are badasses, aside from the above mentioned attributes of awesomeness, then you should do some googling.