A little bit stronger

So I learned a very valuable lesson on Sunday morning. That is, I don't really have a firm grasp on the concept of "swimming." I know how, in theory, to swim. And I can swim a few strokes -- for a few meters. But when it comes to 1500 meters -- or close to a mile -- things get very difficult.

My friend Ila and I decided back in January to do the New Jersey State Triathlon. We also decided that the sprint distance was "too short." So we elected the Olympic distance -- one-mile swim, 26-mile bike ride, 6.2-mile run. The biking I can do and the running I could handle. The swimming I thought I could do. I practiced swimming maybe twice during the past seven months. Clearly a mistake.

Maria and I drove from Indy to Lancaster on Friday, and on Saturday I drove myself to Philly to register and stay over at Ila and Amor's place. She and I woke up at 4 a.m. and headed over to the start at Mercer County Park in Jersey -- which is beautiful, by the way. I should have known that I was in for a near-drowning experience when we parked the car, and the people next to us asked us what distance we were doing. We replied with "Olympic," and they said, "Oh, you must be good swimmers."

That's just great.

There are two distances and two events per distance -- sprint and Olympic, individual and relay.

We headed over to the transition area and prepared our stuff. More crappiness ensued when I put a slightly open Gatorade bottle in my backpack and got my shoes all wet -- and red.

I wasn't actually nervous at all even though the distance for the swim could clearly be seen. Three buoys down the lake? No, walk a little further out the dock. There's another. And another. 750 down, 750 back. Whoa.

First they sent out all the sprint distance participants. Then two Olympic groups ... then my group. Into the water. Not cold, not too bad. Can't stand on anything. Must stay afloat. Now here's the thing with me and swimming -- I pretty much freak out once I get in the water. This is for a few reasons. First, I'm trying to keep my head above water. Second, I'm trying to keep air coming in and the exhaust going out. The lack of coordination means that occasionaly the "breath" that comes in is actually "water," and the "exhaust" that goes out is more like "desperate gasps of air."

Right from the start, I flipped over and got my backstroke on. I was all about survival at this point. I knew I couldn't do a crawl for more than a little bit (and most of that time was spent trying to look up to see where I was going and the rest freaking out about how long I still had to go.) By the time I was halfway to the first buoy, I was hanging onto a kayak to catch my breath.

Thank God for the folks on kayaks.

Wave after wave of people passed me (or swam over me, whatever the case) as I slowly plodded along. I got pretty excited when I got to the turnaround, but about ten minutes into the "swim" back, I was one of the last people in the water. Fortunately, a rather helpful kayaker gave me some other strokes to try, and I was also somewhat neck-in-neck with another straggler. The kayaker would look at me and look at the other person and be like, "Oh, come on, man, you got him. Keep going. Almost there." Rather helpful.

Finally, after an hour and what, 20 minutes of water-logged agony, I was done. I had actually finished. I didn't give up even though it would have been easy as hell to do so. Looking at the results, I was officially the last person out of the water. But again, there were people who didn't finish.

I somewhat trotted over to my bike and walked it over to the mounting area. There's an access road that goes from the transition area to the perimeter of the park where we'd do two laps. As I turned onto the access road, I bent over to get onto my aero bars, veered off the road, onto the gravel, off my bike and onto my ass.

For those of you who know me or have ridden with me, you know that I fall fairly often from my bike. I don't know why this is, but it's a fact of life. So this was not a big deal. I wasn't bleeding; nothing was broken. Back on the bike, I was like, "alright, screw the run, I'm going all out on this bike." I have been putting in solid efforts on the bike in the past few weeks thanks to the purchase of an indoor trainer.

I passed a few people here and there, but the course was mainly empty. There was a slight wind, and I was determined to go at least 20 mph for as long as possible. Looks like I got pretty close to that. My stomach was cramping up something fierce -- thanks to the bent-over position that wasn't really well-designed -- so on the second lap I had to sit up more to feel better. I think it might have also been the three gallons of oil-laced lake water that I drank. Ooof.

For the bike, I picked a fairly tall gear and turned it slow. I based this on the Tour de France kids, who weren't "spinning" like crazy on their time trials, but just doing a nice constant cadence. I barely switched gears, either. It also gave me time to relax and get over the fact that I just tried to drown myself for over an hour.

With the bike finally over, I only had a run/walk to finish. After a mile of "running" (I actually ran the first maybe, mile and a half or two) I caught up to Ila. This would have been more meaningful had she not started 15 minutes after me. We chatted for a bit, and then I started to run a little more. The rest of the race was a mix of jogging and walking. The last quarter mile started after breaking out of some tree cover, so I decided to put on a good show of it and actually run (somewhat more quickly, mind you) into the clearing, around a bend and through the gate. Of course, by the time I finished, they were already tearing down some of the tents and handing out awards. Nonetheless, I freakin' finished.

Obviously I need to become a stronger swimmer if I want to do this more often. And I will, too. I think the season is over for me this year (baby) but next year I'll be ready for some spring events.

I'm also glad that I was able to do this with Ila, because if I had to drive from Indy to Jersey by myself, I probably wouldn't have. I also probably wouldn't have put up with an hour-plus struggle in the water if there wasn't someone else there to motivate me.

Here are the results of the event. Naturally, I'm all the way at the bottom. But remember! Some people didn't finish.