I’ve been training pretty hardcore for the Hermosa Beach Triathlon, which took place last Sunday. This, being my third triathlon, I felt like I could finally shake off the “newb” status and start competing for real. No excuses, just going to run hard. I have been having big aspirations. During my first two races, I’ve been aiming just to finish. This one, I actually wanted to finish in the middle of my division, especially after I realized no one else was going to do it with me and so I signed up in the clydesdale division.
The Hermosa Beach triathlon was kind of a first in many things for me. First time doing one of these by myself, first time feeling confident about my training going into it, first time not having a bike to train on (my fixie is broken, and I had returned the bike Jess had lent me). The last on that list didn’t worry me so much as I consider biking the easiest section for me. I’ve been training hard to gain ground in the two other sections. I dropped $60 on a nice rental bike for the biking section.
The morning of the triathlon came. I woke up, and picked up my buddy Sean who was going to come and cheer me on. We were almost there until we got detoured to another road to avoid driving through the race course. We were on schedule, but starting to cut it, so I was a bit impatient. A cyclist ahead of us in the narrow road wasn’t going very fast, but when he semi-swerved into the lane a bit, I dodged out of mine, into the opposite lane of traffic to avoid hitting him. It was a broken yellow lane, and so I figured I’d just pass him. As soon as I merged back into the lane, a police officer, who had been in the distance ahead, pulled me over. He didn’t really give me a chance to explain my situation, and I was quickly written up for driving on the wrong side of the road. I do intend to fight this, btw.
I got to the start area, the first wave had already taken off, but lucky for me, my wave didn’t start for another 30 minutes, so I began setting up my stuff when I realized, despite double-checking then triple-checking my gear list the night before, i had forgotten my helmet, which meant I won’t be allowed to do the riding section. I tried to ask if there is a place I can buy a helmet, but at 7am, there weren’t many stores open. TriLab, the store I had rented the bike from, had a canopy set up there, but there was no one manning the booth, so my hopes of racing was dashed.
I tried asking one of the race organizers if I can differ my registration for next year, basically not running this year, and have my registration fee be counted next year, and they said they don’t do that, so I decided I’ll just do swim, run and then leave.
I got up to the racing line of my wave. Most of the guys were bigger than me, but most of them appear to be in better shape than me. I got towards the front, wondering maybe I should start first and tried to finish faster than the rest of them, but as soon as I hit the water, I fell behind early. The water was cold. I would say about 50 degrees, and I was in an insulated shorts, while most everyone else had wetsuits. After we made our turn out to sea however, my body had warmed up, and I began to really swim. In past races, later waves had been able to catch up to me. Not this time though. Even though I knew I wasn’t in the top half of the finishers in my group, I knew I was definitely near the middle.
Yeah, I'm not paying for a photo of this race.
I ran out of the water, determined to spring up the path leading up to the transition. Along the way is a checkpoint gate that everyone had to run through. Some genius got the bright idea of putting a sprinkler device on top of the gate spraying down and two big guys who had finished ahead of me were taking up the middle of the gate, washing themselves like it was a public shower or something. Not wanting to slow down, I tried squeezing through on the side. In the process of doing so, I stepped on the corner of a metal plate that was the foundation of the beams of the gate. My foot was still numb from the cold ocean water, so my immediate thought was that I nicked it.
As I got to my transition area, I sat down on the ground, poured water into a pan to wash off my feet. I washed the left foot first and quickly put on my socks, then washed the right foot. As soon as I put the right foot in, the water quickly turned red. My first thought, “where the hell did all the blood come from?” Then I realized I was missing a small chunk of flesh in in my foot. Apparently, the metal plate dug in and ripped out some of it and I was bleeding quite a bit. It wasn’t big, but it was quite deep.
I washed out the blood, dried my foot in the towel. The smart thing to, I thought to myself, was to drop out of the race and tend to my wound, but stubbornness or stupidity kicked in, and I decided I was going to take the day’s frustrations out on the 3-mile run. I put the sock back on, and slipped into my running shoes.
The hole wasn't big, but you can tell by the color (it's really really dark red) that it was heavily stained. my running shoe smells like blood.
I spent a considerable amount of time resting in the transition and the foot felt fine, but as I began running, the numbing effect from the cold ocean swim began to wear off, and the pain from my foot started to set in. I started to walk a bit, and like the previous races, every time I walked, some guy behind me passes me and would say “come on, big guy, you can do it!” prompting me to run for a little bit more before coming back to a walk, which would end a few seconds later when another guy passed me up and say “keep going, buddy, you got this!”
I soon realized that running was definitely less painful than walking, as only the front part of my feet would strike ground. Halfway though, I realized no one else was walking, and I felt ashamed so I just ran the last 1.5 miles to the end. In the last 100 yards, I sprinted my way to the finish line.
Tired, in pain and hungry, Sean and I quickly left the race, even before everyone else finished.
The race results came out the next day. In past Triathlons, when I had set my goal on just finishing, when people asked me how I did, I’d always say “I got first!”
This time, I’m not joking.
Technically... I'm first.
At least technically. I guess, since I didn’t do the bike portion, my finishing time for my age group was the best in my division. Obviously I’m not proud of saying I got first place on this, but I’m proud with my results.
My swim time put me almost right int he middle of the pack, but what really surprised me was my run time. In train, I’ve been doing about 10 minute miles, which I know isn’t fast for most people, but for me and my build, it was almost my level ( I can probably push it down to 8 or 9 minutes). But having walked, limped, jogged most of the way on a bad foot, 33 minutes made me feel like Usain Bolt up in there.
I’m pretty encouraged by these times. I’ve already scheduled my next race, a 5K run at USC next weekend and am looking forward to doing that, provided my foot heals in time (today’s the first day that I’ve been walking without a noticeable limp). I’ll also be finishing my year with a reverse tri in December.
