The Accidental Triathlete
San Jose International Triathlon
June 25, 2006
75 mile swim / 40 k bike / 10 k run

During this triathlon season, I've noticed a slight ebbing of the wave of total commitment that has characterized by relationship with the sport since I first saw Russ in his first sprint. My training has been spotty; my excess weight remains stubbornly unlost; and at one point I even thought seriously about not showing up for a race that I have always really liked. (See Uvas race report.) Life just keeps getting in the way. About two weeks before San Jose International, I woke up in the middle of the night with a tender Achilles tendon, and when I got up the next day I could hardly walk. Rest, ice, stretching -- I knew the drill, but I wasn't sure I'd be fit to go on race day. A few days after that, I noticed a twinge in my right wrist as I typed. A few hours later, I had full-blown tendinitis. I hoped it would go away with ice, aspirin, and as much rest as I could manage, but four days later it hurt too much to type at all, and I was back using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the voice recognition software that saved my job nine years ago when I suffered through a two-year bout with repetitive strain injuries. I figured that cycling was probably not the best thing I could do, so I stayed off the bike. No biking, no running, and my overall morale was kind of in the toilet, what with worrying about the possibility of another two years of wrist pain.

The thing is, I always really like the T-shirt for San Jose International. J & A Productions always has a nice design and a good color, i.e. not white. I have nothing against white T-shirts except that I have about 25 more of them that I can actually wear. And my triathlon superstition prohibits me from wearing a T-shirt from an event in which I did not participate. Therefore, I decided to do the swim, ride the bike for as long as I could, and then drop out when the pain became unreasonable. I worried that I might aggravate the wrists a little, but it was worth it for the T-shirt. At least I thought it would be. But when I went to packet pickup, I discovered to my dismay that the T-shirt was actually (gasp) white. It was a nice design though, so I stuck with my plan and got my gear ready for the following day. It felt a little weird packing up my bike stuff when I felt certain I would not be able to complete the bike, and even weirder packing my running shoes. But somehow I felt that I had to prepare as though I were going to do a whole triathlon. Like if I didn't pack my running shoes, I wouldn't have the right to wear the white T-shirt. Hey, most triathletes are unbalanced in some way.

I resolved on race morning to go out hard in the swim, since for all I knew, my race would be over shortly thereafter. I warmed up a little more thoroughly than usual, though I also spent my usual amount of time bobbing around in the water enjoying the great spectacle around me. Hundreds and hundreds of goggled heads topped with gaudy swim caps bobbed around with me, while hundreds of neoprene-clad idiots just like me paced the shoreline and swung their arms around to limber up. As usual, I was in the last wave, and I was glad my race would be short because it was fixing to get real hot even at nine in the morning. The miniature cannon boomed, and I flung myself joyously into the ruck.

I was doing pretty well by my own standards, which is to say that there were still people behind me three quarters of the way around the course. I lost a little time, however, when I failed to avoid a small peninsula between me and the second to last buoy. I was irritated at myself for the navigation error, and that lent me extra energy as I struck out for the last buoy and then for home. As usual, I saw the safety kayakers and hung over teenagers on surfboards gliding along near me, apparently expending no energy whatsoever to go three times faster than I could possibly swim. Just goes to show you that humans are not particularly hydrodynamic, which I guess we already knew.

Transition was a fairly leisurely affair, and I cruised out onto Almaden Expressway with the ease of long familiarity. I settled into my aero bars as quickly as possible once I was on the bike, wanting to put my weight on my forearms and not on my wrists. So far, so good. Over the bridge on Coleman, down the little hill and right onto the long flat stretch of Santa Teresa. Still feeling okay, though I did notice that I had little pain or tightness in the back of my right knee. Or was it the top of my calf? Over another little bump and down into the Coyote Valley. I was delighted by the slight diminution of the usual morning headwind, and I pedaled along happily, even though the course puts us on the left-hand side of the road at this point, which is really weird. Of course, it is closed to traffic, but it still feels strange. Then you hit the turnaround to come back on the right hand side of the road, which is now of course your left. All too soon comes the left-hand turn onto Bailey Road. I felt like I was making good time so I tried to relax and not think about the climb ahead. At this point I was too far out to really think about quitting. Besides, my arms felt fine as long as I stayed in the aero bars. My right leg felt sore and tweaked but not real painful.

As I knew it would, Bailey kicked up steeply before the first turn. I geared down and started cranking slowly, treating the climb like a long set of leg presses. The first half of the climb is the hardest, then you make a sharp right hand turn and things level out noticeably, though you're still going uphill at a pretty good angle. When I hit the top, I wanted to stop and pant for a few minutes, but instead I tried to keep some momentum going for the short downhill onto the ridge. Even though there were still about 10 miles to go, I was going to finish the bike. Since I wasn't planning on doing the run, I felt justified in putting a little bit more oomph into the pedals to see if I could come up with a better average speed than last year. Having written this road many times, I know exactly where to tuck on the down hills and put some power into the small rollers. Once I hit the flats of the Almaden Valley again, I went into full time trial mode. One of the things I've always kind of regretted about triathlon is that I have to save my legs for the run. This time, I went, if not quite all out, a lot harder than I would normally go in the last few miles of the bike leg.

When I saw Lake Almaden Park ahead of me, I realized that now I had to think about the run. I had been certain I would not get that far, and even if I did, I figured my Achilles' tendon would probably prevent me from going very much farther. Now I was two thirds of the way done with my longest triathlon of the year so far, and my Achilles hadn't bothered me at all during the bike. My knee was really kind of hurting now though. Still, I was leaning towards slipping those running shoes on and giving it a shot. It seemed certain that I would try to jog a few steps, feel pain, and have to drop out. Right? Oh, well, maybe not¬Ö

I took a last swig of sports drink in transition after I got my shoes firmly situated on my feet. It was in fact getting pretty hot. I started shuffling through the transition area and found to my great surprise and not inconsiderable alarm that my leg did not hurt anymore. Well, I reasoned, I could do the first mile or mile and a half without getting too far from the postrace food and drink. Surely by that time my knee would be sore enough to justify quitting. The first part of the run course goes out and back along a bike path that has some shade, so that was not too bad. When I got back to the wooden bridge where the course branches off around the reservoir and out to the percolation ponds, I still wasn't hurting. I was getting close to a third of the way through the run, so I thought I'd better keep going. I kept a steady alternation of four minutes of jogging and a minute of walking, and it was working. As I came to the second aid station, I reached into my back pocket for my gel, but it wasn't there. They were all out of gels at the station, too, which sort of sucked. I was working a lot harder than I had planned to this morning, and I needed my calories.

The whole section of the run once you leave the reservoir is a little bit of a moonscape. You are running next to the creek for a while, but the path is hot, dusty, and devoid of shade. There's another aid station, where I paused to gulp down gel and fluids. Then you get to the percolation ponds, and things get really surreal. It's all dust, gravel and freeway overpasses, and the ponds themselves glow a strange emerald green color. They look really clean and nice, and in the heat it's incredibly tempting just to leap in. So far, I have resisted this temptation. About two thirds of the way around the ponds, my stomach started cramping up and my knee finally started to hurt again. But, at this point, of course, I was something like 2 1/2 miles from the finish. I thought about commandeering the golf cart at the aid station I saw ahead of me. I really was not feeling good. I started to walk more and jog less. I made it past the golf cart without jumping in, which was a major moral triumph. From here to the finish, it would just be about endurance.

The last 2 miles passed with excruciating slowness. My walk was kind of a limp. My jog was even more of a shuffle than it had been when I started. My walk was now outnumbering my jog by a factor of maybe two to one. When I started the run, I figured that if I maintained my normal jogging 10K pace I could beat my time from last year by a solid 10 minutes. Now I was struggling to match last year's time, but I didn't really care. My stomach was cramping and gurgling, my leg hurt, and I was incredibly hot and uncomfortable. Less than a mile from the finish I caught up with a fellow sufferer who was bent over stretching some sore part of her anatomy. We walked together for awhile, commiserating about how much we hurt and how hot it was. But she recovered sooner than I did and took off at a pretty respectable pace. I plodded on through the picnickers and the kids riding their little bikes around the park. Finally I reached the wooden bridge again, which meant I had less than a quarter-mile to go. I put on my traditional yet somehow strangely imperceptible "finishing kick" and hauled my exhausted butt to the line.

For the first time in my triathlon career, I actually felt justified in going to the first aid tent for an ice pack, as the back of my knee was tightening up fairly dramatically. I grabbed some form of recovery drink (sorry, sponsors, I don't remember what it was) from a barrel blessedly full of ice, rinsing my face off in the ice water for good measure. Then I sat down and let the nice young man attach an ice pack to my leg. I felt very burly. I had gone from “"swim only" status to finishing the triathlon without ever really expecting to. Once my leg was good and cold, I got up and started limping around, greeting my fellow SVTC-ers and basking in the glow of unanticipated achievement.

There were a couple of pieces of good news about this development. First, I learned that on race day at least, my commitment to triathlon remains undiminished. Second, much to my surprise, the knee felt fine by the next day, and my wrists and Achilles' tendon suffered no ill effects from all the excitement. Oh, and also, I actually did improve on my time from 2005 by 2 whole minutes. So, with apologies to Captain Peter Quincy Taggart: Never give up...and never surrender.

(Unless, of course, it really, really, really hurts. Then you should give up)