RR- Indoor Tri #2

Asphalt Green pool.



On Sunday, January 23 I participated in an indoor triathlon, sponsored by Jack Rabbit Sports. This was my second indoor tri, and this one was being held in Asphalt Green, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Since my first one, a few weeks ago (on 1/9/11), I had started a swimming class, and therefore was looking forward to a better swim. I also was looking forward to going faster on the bike - I had averaged 30mph on the spin bike (not the equivalent speed as outside) and was hoping that I could just eek out a couple more miles per hour. It was a matter of having the highest cadence rate in order to get the highest mileage. I was not expecting to do very well on the run. I had just run the Manhattan Half Marathon the day before in Central Park (in 14 degree weather no less!) and was fairly tired from that.




That's me in that race picture before the start of the Manhattan Half. That's the pool for the Indoor Tri.


I knew I couldn't pull off a very fast 2o minute run on the treadmill. 'Fast' for me is of course, relative to myself. My fast is fairly slow relative to most other triathletes.


We got a tour of the place, in order to know how to go from the pool thru the locker room to the spin room and then the place where the treadmills were. I was very excited, felt like an earnest student following closely behind the tour guide while everyone else was slacking behind, chatting with eachother.

I set up my mini-transition in my locker. Keep my sneakers with the socks in them, and my outfit in a plastic bag separate from my clothes and coat. After changing into my bathing suit I go out to the pool. Everything changed right then.

The side where we were starting in was on the side where the diving boards were. Hence, the pool was very deep. I got vertigo just looking at the pool's depth, and then when I jumped in I felt I was going down, down, down. I came back up and realized that I hadn't put on my cap and goggles. I usually put those on in the water, because I am usually standing up in the pool. Here I was, floating... It's hard to put a swim cap and goggles on when you are not touching the floor!

So I put the cap on, and then the goggles. No matter how I tried to adjust my goggles, I felt like I looked like a nerdy scientist with coke bottle glasses that were slightly askew and foggy. I tried to make small talk with the guy in the lane next to me. He mentioned that since the pool is big, it has a lot 'more pull' than smaller pools. I didn't know exactly what or how that was, but I figured I'd be able to go faster. Even though the swim is the least important time wise in a triathlon, I've been worried about it and focusing on it in my training these past few weeks.

The countdown starts and off we go! That first length, I feel great. I think about all the drills that I've done to improve my stroke and I go down the length of the pool feeling like I am really swimming. I notice that my lane mate is going faster, so I try to go a little faster. I had been finding her annoying in the locker room, and then in the lane with me - so casual about this tri - 'it'll be a nice 1 hour workout'. She was so slow getting ready, following the tour guide around, not taking it as seriously as I was, and then here she was going faster than me.

Needless to say, that was the beginning of the end. Actually, it was just plain the end. I had gone out too fast, and I could no longer breathe. I usually like to take 3 strokes and then breathe; I pride myself on being able to alternate sides - breathing to the right, and then breathing to the left. Now, I was breathing so hard, that I had to breathe, stroke, breathe, stroke. But even that was not fast enough for how out of breath I was. I kept trying to do this, but as I progressed without being able to catch my breath, the worse my swim stroke got. My newly refined swim stroke just fell apart and I was now swimming like a drowning fish. Flailing arms, flailing head, mouth in the shape of an 'o'. I noticed the wife of someone that was there in the triathlon, videotaping me instead of her husband. I was still so out of breath that I could not tolerate having my head even one second in the water, so I turned on my back. I was so downtrodden at this point, that I couldn't really do the back stroke, and so I just kicked and had my arms to the sides. Meanwhile, I was still breathing very fast and hard, and coughing all the while. I told myself that I was done and had the thought to get to the end of the pool and just leave. But then I started thinking about all the race reports that I have read, and motivational ironman videos that I have seen, and I had the thought to 'just finish'. So I continued a couple more lengths of the pool. The guy that was watching my lane was very encouraging, yelling 'you're doing great!' each time I got by him. Even though I knew it wasn't true, as I kicked my way away from him one more time, it felt good that he was saying this.

The 10 minutes were up, finished 10 lengths of the pool and I was now on my way back to the locker room to change into my tri suit. I already had my plan. Finish. I did the spinning bike and I averaged 25mph on the odometer, not the 32mph that I had hoped for. My speed was slow enough to have the coordinator come up to me to tell me there is no extra credit for resistance on the bike - meaning I should be spinning a lot faster. I was still coughing. I finished my Gatorade in the first 15 minutes, and just kept pedaling in a daze until the 30 minutes were up. We then went to the treadmills. I thought maybe I could run really slowly, so I started out at 4.5 mph, but right away my heart rate went up and I felt I couldn't breathe, so I went back down to 3.3 mph and kept it at that for the 20 minutes of the 'run'. I was so wiped out, that I just put my clothes on over my tri outfit and left the building.

Walking up the slight hill to where my car was parked, I felt the tightness in my chest and was totally out of breath. I had to walk really slowly to my car, and had visions of going to the ER with a heart attack. I sat in the car and cried on the phone to my partner who said it was my asthma and to come home. I got home and took two puffs, no, actually 3 puffs of the asthma pump and slowly started to feel better. No heart attack.

Results: there were a total of 23 women in the race, I came in dead last. I was surprised to see however, that I was not last in the swim, nor was I last in the bicycling. (second to last, but not last!) I was last, though, in the running. I swam a total of 10 lengths of the pool; 12.35 miles biking, and 1.13 miles running. Like my partner said, it can only get better.