Fit Nation: No wipeouts, no rescues

June 12th was the Naperville Women's Sprint Triatholon. This was going to be a warmup for the Nautica New York City Triathlon on August 7.

For the past four months, I've been training and learning all that goes into triathlon. Transitions, clip on shoes, changing tubes, fastest way to get in and out of a wetsuit, were all buzz words and now the time had come to actually execute!

The Sherox women's tri was a sprint distance and I was going to be doing the swim and bike portion of the race and Rosie from my run club, would be doing the run portion.

The day before I'd gone for packet pickup and sat through two hours of course talk and that really helped me get centered and get into race mode. There were at least 1,500 women registered for the race and a lot of them were first timers. I totally felt like I was in the right place. The night before I started laying out all my tri gear. I'd never had to pack all my race stuff in one bag before so it took me a while to get everything packed. I wore my timing chip, my race bracelet and my watch to bed– I didn't want to forget them in haste the next morning.

I woke up at 4 a.m. feeling queasy... race nervousness? I felt better after my cup of tea and some eggs. Transition area was going to be open at 5 am and I wanted to get there as soon as I could. I was there by 5:15am primarily so I could get close parking. I got my bike and walked a few hundred yards to the transition area. I was in wave 3 and got a great spot just 10 feet away from bike mount. I setup my transition area and was chatting with the women next to me. One of them was looking for a tampon– ugh– my worst nightmare.  I didn't have one but took a mental note to keep one handy in my Tri bag. With 1,500 women there, I think she eventually found one.

6:15 am to 6:45am was swim warm-up.  I put on my wetsuit and started swimming a lap.  It was terrible.  I couldn't get my rhythm going but at least I warmed up. It was time to get in line for the race start. The first wave featured the elites, the second wave were the survivors of ovarian cancer and the third wave was the relay. I saw a teenage girl who was in the survivor wave and it was a revelation as I wasn't aware that ovarian cancer struck teenagers! But there was no time to ponder, as wave three was called.

This race had "swim angels" – master swimmers who volunteer to swim along your side if you want. Georgia was my swim angel. We let the other women get a head start and then I started swimming. Only once did I have to hang off the ropes when I swallowed water and couldn't recover.

Also, the lanes had a shallow end, and you get to walk part of the course- that was helpful. The swim course was done in 20 minutes and onto the bike.

Once I got out of my wetsuit, I jumped on the bike and away I went. It was two loops around and I watched someone crash up ahead of me who was taken in an ambulance. Other than that, for the most part, the bicycling was uneventful. When I got down from the bike, my race partner was waiting and I handed her the timing chip and then I made my way to the race finish line to wait for her. She did the 5k in about 30 minutes.

I was quite happy with how the race went. My only goals for the race were not to be rescued from the swim, not to have a wipeout on the bike, and no hiccups during transition– so, I think I achieved all of that!