Hooooboy. It has been *such* a long time since I’ve written a race report. The last one I did was for another triathlon. I think it was two, three years ago.

I was relatively fit then. I know this because I did a 10K the day before I did the sprint tri, and I felt fine starting the race and ending it. This time…not so much. I last ran three miles in July. I last rode my bike more than 10 miles in…I dunno. May? May? Seriously, yes. I was still doing a reasonable amount of swimming on a daily basis when I got into the car with Jim and my bicycle September 14, but I wasn’t going to Utah to race.

Here is the lovely Utah landscape and some mountains I did not think I was going to be running up or down or anything like that a few weekends ago. 

I packed my sneakers, my bike stuff, and some run stuff, because a friend of mine was going to meet us there. Our husbands would race, but I had decided it was going to be a weekend of doing the _other_ things I like to do: reading, writing, finally getting back to my watercolors, pootling, just pootling on the bike and in the hills, maybe. I did spend the first morning at our shared condo doing those things, while everyone was out getting registered, but then when they got back home, the first thing my friend said was, “I registered.”

Oh! My heart sank. Oh, how lonely I felt just then, how quickly and sharply I remembered the previous year, when I drove Jim’s parents around the course while Jim and our friend Donna raced. Oh, I recalled the jealousy from watching them flop on the couch after their post-race showers, looking very slightly sunburned, tired enough to take forever to crack open their beers.

Here is the shirt I should have worn all weekend so no one (especially myself) bothered me about racing. 

People, there ain’t nothin’ like race day–and there ain’t nothin’ like post-race either, when you stumble across the finish line and know that, whatever it is you eat or do the next couple of days, you earned it.

I took another couple hours to think about it, but after we’d taken a quick recon ride on the race course, I was pretty well convinced. So I got big numbers plastered on me and ate a nervous pasta-ish meal and then we all went home and got ready for the race.

Here is the proof that I did something very stupid the day before a race: I registered. 

Folks, I know how to swim, bike, and run. I’m reasonably skilled on a mountain bike, and I really enjoy being out on it. Running is a necessary evil that I used to enjoy. But nothing can make up for months of lying relatively idle for a few months straight.

Well. This is where you say to yourself, Surely this is one of those stories where she surprises herself with her fitness, and there is joy and angels’ choirs and something like a halfway decent time, right? This is where she digs deep, a story of inspiration and blahbbity blibbity lip flap etcetera, right? No. No. Sorry. This is not one of those stories.

You see, untrained muscles are just that: Untrained. That whole “muscle memory” thing? That’s not about your muscles remembering how to be strong. That’s just about them remembering what it was like when they were strong. This muscle memory, by the way, makes you incredibly frustrated with yourself, and your muscles incredibly frustrated with you, when you have to hobble along next to your bike because both quads have cramped up. And then, imagine their further frustration when your muscle memory also says, “Oh! We know how to fix this cramp! Just pull your ankle up to your butt and–WHAT WHAT O HEY NOW WHAT IS THAT AGONIZING CRAMP ON THE BACKS OF OUR LEGS NOW WHAT WHAT OWTCH.”

Here are the bananas I should have eaten because they might have saved my legs from cramping. Okay, not. Anyway. 

You begin to see the problems. Suffice it to say that, by mile 10 or so of the 12-mile bike, I was knelt on the ground by my bike; ass on ankles, helmet on the gear ring, focusing on breathing. (Somewhere in the back of my brain was the line from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” where he’s muttering to himself, “The penitent man shall kneel; the penitent man shall kneel.” Oh, yes, I was penitent, all right.) People looked at me concernedly. Other competitors asked if I was okay. Passersby asked if I was okay. It was one of those.

All right. Fast forward past the run, to the finish line. (Let’s just say that on the way to the finish line I was passed by an amputee doing a course that was twice as long as mine was; a seventy-year-old, some kids, and a great many more people, and that doesn’t count the people who got out of the water way faster than I did. Also, I finished a good two hours behind the prior finisher in my age group. Mmmhmmmm.) Flop flap across the line, lie on the grass, pant moan etcetera. Did not even have the energy for normal post-race beer.

Now, when I told this story to a bunch of college students last week, I used it to illustrate a cardinal writing rule of mine. I said the rule was “You do you.” And I still stand by that. We should all be doing our own thing; we shouldn’t be writing shit because the market says we should write about wizards or whatever; because our moms say writing legal briefs is more lucrative than writing poetry. Neither the market nor our mamas is lying, but if our hearts do not want to write legal briefs or books about wizards, we will not be happy and our work really will be for shit.

Also, just because your friends are doing a triathlon, you should not also do a triathlon.

But–I was happy out there on the course. I did not enjoy the cramping, but I enjoyed the ride itself. I did not enjoy the shambling shuffle that passed for my run, but I liked being in the woods and sticking to the dirt and feeling competent on the course.

The swim…I did not like the swim at all. The swim can bite me.

But oh! Triathlon. Oh! The outdoors. Oh! The muscle memory of being tired, smug, happy, with a cold beer in your paws, crab-like from shifting some gears that will not shift, and clutching at Gu packets. Even my gigantic age spot cannot keep me from loving this.

Yeah. “You do you” apparently means that not even the flat-out fact that I am not ready for a triathlon can keep me off the course. I kept on saying, “You know better than this,” and you know what? I did not care. So I am going to have to get back on the bike and back in the water and back out on the hills. It may take awhile.

But it is time. Because apparently I’m going to do a triathlon no matter what my brain says is smart, so I might as well be ready. I guess that’s just me, as me.

Here is the position in which I hope to never finish a race again: The beer, she is missing.