The race is four days over. An hour after I crossed the finish line (running, thank you), I still felt nauseous. Two meals and a few hour after that, I was raring to go. Bought a pair of sneakers, went to see War of the Worlds, reclaimed part of my life. How was the race? I'll tell ya...
If you've read some of the posts of my training, you may know that I hit a bit of a slump in the form of a chest cold about a month before the race. This came just as my back was almost better. It was the same week all the wheezing joggers in the park breezed past me. The humidity kicked in. I found out my pool was a few meters shorter and I was a slower swimmer than I had ever known. I say this, because, well, I learned that a lot of the training and the race is mental. And mentally, I may not be a triathlete. Let me continue.
4am Sunday morning, July 10.
I'm trying to eat a piece of wheat toast smeared with peanut butter. My bike is at the race start, my bag is packed and heavy with Amino Vital drinks and I'm not nervous, but I am really full. I've been carb loading and I ate dinner too late the night before. Oopsie. It's easy to find a cab because the drunk people stumbling out of the bars are not as alert as me. What the hell am I doing?
I'm in the transition area at 4:45am, laying out my gear and listening to the nervous chatter of women about to swim a mile in the Hudson River. Everyone wants an opinion. What are you wearing for the run? Are you wearing a wetsuit? What sunscreen are you using? Everyone wants to let everyone know their weak points. Be it the swim, bike or run, we're all nervous about one or more of them. For me, it's the run. I haven't had a good run since that slump, and the runs before that were not much better. I'm also a little nervous about the fact that I'm one of five women not wearing a wetsuit. And we're all looking for each other. Solidarity!
Tina and I (another non-wetsuit girl) make our way 30 blocks to the swim start. On the way, Tina tells me she's nervous about the bike and swim, but she's sure to do under a 40 minute 10K. And that she bikes about 20mph, because she's only been doing it two months. I've yet to average a 20mph loop around the park. I do what I can not to push Tina into the Hudson.
I see Rob Corddry at the swim start hanging around his wife who's in the race. I stare at him as much as possible in a coy way. He's sure to be impressed I'm going it without the wetsuit! Heart throb heart throb.
I'm in a corral with all the other 30-34 year old women in red bathing caps watching the water and shaking out our nervous energy. The first set of swimmers enter the water at 6am. The announcer tells us it's going to be the fastest one mile swim of our lives. The current's ste-rong. I stand on tippy toes to watch the colored caps and arms chopping through the water, work out some nervous energy and remind myself that I have calf muscles, big ones. They call red caps to the start.
I squeeze a seat on the edge of the dock between two women, both in wetsuits. The water's moving and greenish brown. I'm more excited than nervous. I want to laugh. I crack a joke about water rats that gets nervous teeth chatter and dirty looks. We jump in the water and grab a thin rope so the current doesn't take us. I help some women over to my side of the rope. The water's warm and my fear of not having a wetsuit is gone. I'm about to swim in the freakin' Hudson. And then I'm swimming in the freakin' Hudson.
There are lots of women swimming in the freakin' Hudson and we're all pushing one another. When I find a place without other women, I discover I don't want to keep my head in the water. Not because it's dirty, but because I'm too anxious to breathe. It's alright, I tell myself. Then just keep it up. And after a while, I can swim with my head down into the water, at least for every other breath. I know I'm not swimming as efficiently as when I trained. It's hard to think about my stroke. I try to breath every third stroke, but I just can't. And I tell myself it's alright. It's not like I do triathlons and open water swims every other day. I feel good. A potato chip bag skims my face. This is amazing.
I swim in zig zags. I know this because every time I look up, I'm heading towards one side of the twenty foot lane or the other. I'm approaching fishing boats and can taste the gasoline from the coast guard boat. A woman in a yellow kayaker tells me to move over. I'm not expecting a good swim time at this point. But I'm going to make it. I feel good. A bottle cap skims my face.
It's a long swim, no doubt. It wouldn't have felt nearly as long with a wetsuit. But I wanted to test myself, all me. And I've done it. I grab a hand and I'm on the ramp headed out of the water. I'm running on pavement from 80th street to 72nd back to the transition. I don't know that I have sludge on my face. I try to drink a cup of water but throw it over my head instead. I have no idea why I do this. I'm not hot.
I think of all the women passing me in the run and I don't care. I think about what I need to do when I get to the transition area. Bike shorts, then socks and shoes, then helmet and sunglasses. The gloves are hard to get on.
The hill to get out of the park on the bike is cake. And then I'm on the Henry Hudson heading north. The bike ride is where I plan to kick ass. I try to start kicking ass. I'm passing people, but they're slow. I push harder and find that my thighs are burning. Burning?! I'm having a hard time getting my speed above 16mph. I drink Amino Vital. I struggle up a small hill. Tina flies past me. (At least she has bad form.) I push and drink and push and drink. After seven miles, I check to see if my tires are flat. I consider asking a passing cyclist, but triathlon is a quiet sport. People are not talking. Gears are clicking, the wind is moving, the tires are coasting and nobody is saying anything. We're all strangers now. We're all doing this race alone.
Mile 8 and something clicks. My tires aren't flat. My legs stop burning. I can fly. I push and my bike goes. A fast woman with rock solid thighs passes me and I can catch her. I have speed and strength for the rest of the climbs. I pass Tina on a downhill going 34mph. She passes me again at some point but it doesn't matter. I pedal hard and the bike responds.
Around mile 20, still feeling good but realizing I'm not the strongest cyclist on the course and I've got a run ahead of me that's most likely going to kick my ass, I ask myself, what are you doing? I am a mediocre swimmer, mediocre cyclist and mediocre to poor runner. I'm wearing a $10 pair of glasses held together by tape. It's not even 8am yet. What am I doing? Butt soreness saves me from answering. Padding in cycling shorts does something after all. I push on to 59th street then loop back up to the 72nd street transition. It's almost over.
I start the run with two gu packs and very little left in my legs. I've heard that, at this point, your legs are supposed to feel like mush, like they might collapse and that you should keep going. They'll feel better by mile 2. Mine don't feel like mush, but they ache and I can barely get myself above a walking pace. My father's there and he runs with me, yelling at my boyfriend to take a picture.
I make it out of the park onto 72nd street. There are women running just as slow as me and they're not overweight. This is comforting. Maybe it shouldn't be.
I can see the park. Just a jog in the park, I tell myself. It's almost over. Savor. Enjoy. Just a jog in the park and it's all done. I think somebody said that on the way out of transition? My legs hurt. I'm a terrible runner. I'm in the park now. There are a lot of people in the park. There are a lot of runners passing me at high speeds. There is a woman in front of me who has a cramp and is stabbing herself in the stomach and screaming. I see Rob Corddry's wife. I pass the screaming woman because she's the only one I'm going to be able to pass. There is no satisfaction in this.
What I find out on the run is, I don't have the will to push past pain. What I find out on the run is, I've mentally defeated myself before I've begun. I went into the race telling myself I wasn't a good runner. I went into the race expecting to fail on the run. And I didn't completely fail on the run, but I did let myself stop whenever I needed to. Was I feeling bad because I expected to or because I was physically tired? My assessment was 50/50. I was 50% in pain, and 50% mentally defeated. I'm making this sound worse than it really was. I crossed the finish line running. I did the run in just under an hour, which is not much slower than my normal pace. I just wish I was a better runner.
I didn't know if the mile markers meant. Marker 2: you've just started mile 2 or you've just finished? This became extremely important at Mile Marker 5.
At mile marker 3 I decided I would never in my life be able to do a half-ironman.
The run was hard. I never hit my stride. I let myself stop for a few seconds whenever I needed it. I got water at the rest areas. My abdomen felt like it weighed twenty pounds alone. My joints ached. There were people passing me who seemed like they were in more pain than me, palsied and wheezing. I didn't have the will to do it. I didn't have the will of a true competitor. A triathlete. This is feeling like the moral of a story. I'll stop.
I crossed the finish line running. And when I stopped running, I was able to walk and stand and speak. But I was feeling odd. Taking a deep breath was odd. I was coughing. The chest cold still dormant? I didn't feel elated, I felt tired. So much was behind me. So much was on me. Namely, a Hudson River film that was dark and gritty and gathered under my nails when I scratched.
A friend told me I was very good at telling the dark side of training. (He said this after I recounted a swim where I burped up a chunk of ClifBar mid lap.) Part of that is wanting to make it a good story, and the belief that good stories come more out of suffering and bad news than elation and happiness. Part of it is that there's a lot of hard work and bad news during training. And suffering through races. But it's not the whole story.
I got my time a few days later. The elation came. It's here to stay. I did this.
57 Joy Parisi 33 New York NY 50 26:05 6:18 44 1:25:01 1:55 107 59:35 57 2:58:52
