Sometime in the middle of the night, not quite asleep in one of two full-sized beds in a Motel 6 in Elkton, Maryland (I never manage to actually fall asleep the night before a race), I heard a distinct patter and rumbling outside. A thunderstorm. A big one. The room was still dark, or as dark as it had been when I turned off the light and feigned sleep at around eleven--charcoal gray with a white shine of tall streetlamps or the all-night truck stop across the street. When the alarm on my cell phone went off at five thirty in the morning, the thunderstorms were still going strong. Very strong. Gusts of rain in the streetlamps and curbs flooded and streaming with water. I delayed loading the car as long as I could, and then I snuck under the dripping eave and made six trips to get everything in. I was wet. And cold. And pretty sure, or hoping, the race would be called off.
On the way to the race site, I ate a dry roll, or as much of the dry roll I could stomach, supplemented with a fresh cup of coffee from a gas station convenience store. The rain was coming down harder by the minute. The shoulder was flooded, and as I got closer to the race, so was most of the road. I was about to ride a bike in this?
By the time I reached the parking area for the race, it was light out, but still pouring with intermittent flashes of lightning. The grassy parking area was all mud, and my running shoes and socks were sopping within a few minutes. Everyone had the same question. Were we racing in this?
I slogged out to the transition area with my bike and a bag full of gear. The transition area, a roped off grassy area next to the North East River, a branch of the Chesapeake Bay, was half submerged in ankle-deep water. What the hell. I sloshed through and racked my bike. It was one of three bikes racked, which left 497 open spaces. There was a large crowd huddled under a gazebo and I joined them.
Spirits were still fairly high. Most people wanted to get the race in. I choked down a soy yogurt, chalkier than strawberry, and listened to the possible effects of the storms. First, if the lightning stopped, everything would go as planned. Any lightning after seven, and the swim was called off. If the swim was called off, they would make the race a duathlon, which meant replacing the swim with a 5K run. Chatter of relief went through the crowd. My stomach sunk. Adding 3.1 miles to this race just about disqualified me. And apparently, I was in the company of many happy, great runners. The third alternative, if the rain persisted, would be to delay the start further and make it a bike/run when the rain stopped. I did a rain chant in my head. Which didn't work, because at seven they called the swim off, and at seven fifteen, the sky brightened and the rain subsided to a drizzle. A duathlon it would be.
The duathlon started at about fifteen minutes after eight. Which was more than two hours since I'd eaten anything substantial. I sucked down a bottle of Gatorade. I couldn't stomach a bar or anything else. They played the national anthem over the loudspeakers. Four minutes after the first wave of runners left the starting gate, the announcer counted down and my wave was off. There was a big guy in my wave carrying a sizable American flag on a sizable flagpole. Someone asked him if he was going to carry it the whole way, and he planned to. As I started down the road on the first leg of the race, I watched the flag get smaller and smaller. I felt pain in my lower back, which had been aching and tight for the last two weeks. I ran. I tried to slow myself down, which was hard because I had already been passed by the heavy set women, and as always, I was afraid to look back and see nobody behind me.
I finished the 5K out of breath, hot and far too fast for the first leg of a race. I should have been running ten-minute miles to keep my energy for what was to come. Instead I was running closer to nine-minute miles, my top pace. It was no longer raining but the air was thick with humidity. All bad news for me.
I started the bike trying to keep my power meter between the prescribed 155 and 165. But my thighs felt like blocks of concrete and an effort that should have felt like a mild strain, felt hard. My mood was low, and when I thought of the 24 more miles to bike and the six plus mile run to follow, my mood spiked lower. Which meant I hadn't eaten enough to boot.
I pushed the bike for a few more miles, and then made a fast decision that there was no way I had another run in me. I wasn't going to finish this race. In some ways, I felt I was being honest. (At that point, I wasn't even sure I'd finish the bike, my strong suit.) In other ways, I felt like a big fat quitter. I had never not finished a race. I had crossed finish lines dizzy and barely above a walk, but I had never not crossed a finish line. I thought back on my arrival in North East, Maryland. The gray day and grim feeling I had gotten from the town, a two-block strip of antique and craft shops and restaurants with names like Steak & Main. This was supposed to be a destination spot for tourists, but it felt as grim as aisles of the antique stores and depressing as the racks of crab-emblazoned T-shirts that said, "I'm crabby." And then there was the rest of the night spent running from Wal-Mart to the Acme trying to avoid a fast-food dinner only to scrounge up one of fried chicken in a bag eaten at the desk of the Motel 6 inches from the television screen. And the rain I had woken up to that morning. They all felt like bad signs. There was no elation or happiness I had felt on the days of other races. It was one bad thing after the next. And it wasn't getting any better.
At this point, I passed a woman walking her bike. I asked if she needed help. She said she had a flat, and I stopped and helped her change her flat. I needed something to make me feel better. I needed something positive to happen that day if I wasn't going to cross the finish line. And though I may be the slowest tire changer on record, it felt great to help someone else. It felt great to do something that sealed my fate that I wouldn't be racing. (All the soccer moms and mountain bikes had passed me while I changed the flat.) And it felt great to take a break.
I finished with grease all over my arms and under my fingernails, which made me feel happy. And as soon as I had her tire on, I took off. In a way, I wanted to be back in the race, even if I wasn't finishing. At this point, things got better. I hauled ass on the bike. My mood was up. The Gatorade had started working. And now that I didn't need to save anything for the run, I put everything I had into the next twenty plus miles.
When I got off the bike, my power meter was at 182 watts average, and 1:21 minutes. This was more power than I had been able to sustain over that period of time ever. I had passed most of the mountain bikes, one of which said, "Nice work" as I passed, and I wasn't sure if he was referring to the tire change or how I was making the hill look easy. I rode the last five miles with a 58-year old man and we pushed one another to go faster and harder right until the end. I got off the bike dizzy. I had accomplished something. And now I could go home without feeling a total failure.
Back in the swampland of the transition area, I sat down and packed up. "Not finishing the race?" a woman at the other end of the rack asked. She was chunky and looked a bit older, someone I would place in the soccer mom category. I told her no, I was done. The announcer talked about the first woman crossing the finish line and the free dinner at the crab shack that was waiting for all the racers. I chatted with the woman for a bit. She said she wasn't a runner either, talked about running groups to join, and how things had slowed down when she became a mother. While we talked, her husband walked up with a beautiful blonde child strapped to his chest. I told her it was encouraging that I might not stop racing if and when I ever had kids. "Oh no," she assured me. "Though it's easier if you don't put on too many pounds when you're pregnant." I handed in my timing chip.
Back in the car, I settled down into a two-hour drive. I made phone calls to everyone I knew to confess that I had quit the race before it was over, searching for consolation. My back tightened into painful knots, pain that resonated through my hips and legs, and pain that heightened as I drove into the miles of traffic in Staten Island that put me an extra hour from home. Pain that go so bad I cried. Though I didn't know if it was only the pain that was making me cry. It could have been the raw emotion that goes into every race, the lows and highs of it, beating myself up for quitting before I even tried the run. It could have been the desire to stand up and get out of the car to relieve the pain, the pure frustration at being unable to do so for at least another hour because after Staten Island was the BQE, a road which promised even more congestion. The crying felt good. An hour later, the hot shower felt better. And an hour after that, a nap on the couch on a dark, rainy afternoon felt the best.
