people’s triathlon

On Saturday, I “competed” in the 3rd Annual People’s Triathlon.

Organized by my buddy Mitch, it’s a more or less ad hoc event between friends, designed to raise a little money for charity and hang out with your buddies. The plan was to arrive at Duncan’s Ridge (a local bouldering spot) to drop off our bikes. We would then all pile into a pickup truck and get driven to Horsetooth Reservoir, where we would swim about 1/2 mile, run the 3.5 miles back to our bikes, and then bike 25 miles to the finish.

Let me say that I am a sucky swimmer and I really hate running. So my goal was to not get left in the dust by everyone and hope to make up some time on the bike.

Surprisingly, the reservoir wasn’t all that cold at 8:30 in the AM. Wearing my fluorescent green Old Navy $5 swim trunks, I gingerly tottered into the water and awaited the start signal from Mitch. Everyone launched into the water, and I vainly tried to swim a few strokes, but my hips kept on sinking. As an added annoyance, I couldn’t open my eyes underwater due to wearing contact lenses and no goggles. As I said, I’m a really sucky swimmer. So I ended up hugging the big orange buoy and basically used it to keep me afloat while I floated on my back and kicked lazily. I think I got lapped by the fastest swimmers twice, and the slowest swimmers only once. Weirdly, once everyone else finished swimming, they waited 5 minutes for me towelling off and hanging out while I pathetically splashed around. Maybe they thought I was gonna die or something, who knows. But that should give you a flavor of the level of “competition” in our race, i.e., not very.

As I dragged myself ashore, people gave me a nice congrats for not drowning and giving everyone a bad name, and then they took off running. I was able to put my shoes on pretty quickly, and began my second most hated event, running. I ended up catching maybe 2 or 3 of the slower girls on the run, but it was pretty painful. Also, I discovered that fluorescent green Old Navy $5 swim trunks are not the best to run in. Major chafage.

Again, staggering into the bike area, people were pulling out as I was arriving. I changed as quickly as I could, and slammed down a Mt. Dew AMP energy drink, which was probably a good idea, but left me burping nuclear fizz for the next 3 miles. At this point, I’d thought that maybe 15 people were in front of me, and they had at least a 3 — 5 minute gap. It was going to be tough to make all that time up, especially considering the bike course was so flat, by Colorado standards, anyhow.

The course went north over Dixon Dam, through Bellvue, up the road to Rist Canyon for a bit, then east to the Laporte cement plant, buzzing the Budweiser brewery, and finally ending at the Country Club. I caught one person and then another, and another while on the dams. Not bad. By the descent into Bellvue, I can see my buddies Benny and Fenway up ahead. I zoom past them on the descent and am in front for a while, but once we start the next little rise up into Rist, first Fenway catches and passes me, and then Benny latches on.

I attempt to eat a Balance bar, but it’s like chewing concrete, so I shove it back into my pocket. Nasty. Once we hit the gravel road to cut over to 287, I drop Benny like a bad habit and I’ve got Fenway in my sights. When I make the catch, I can see two riders up in the distance — Kuzma and Mitch. Although it’s probably futile to catch them, I try anyway, with little twinges of cramps tickling my calves the whole time. As it is, I’m about a constant 400 yards, plus or minus 100 yards from them the rest of the ride.

At this point, I think I’m probably middle of the field or so, since I don’t see anyone else. As I make the final right hand turn and pull into the Country Club, I see Kuzma and Mitch standing there, but no one else. I’m wondering what’s going on, and I figure that Mitch is rearranging one of the balloons that signal which way to turn (red means right, black means left), but as I pull up, they say, “Congrats!”

“Where is everyone?” I wonder, and they inform me that everyone else is in back of me. Hm, weird and interesting, but cool. Apparently, Touchdown Brown, the clear front runner in the race, made a wrong turn somewhere, which sucked for him, but no big deal since it was just a friendly day anyhow. (Still, I got to the finish line before he did, so there ;)

So depending on how you look at it, I either came in 2nd place (since Kuzma didn’t do the running portion, while Mitch did all 3 sections), 3rd place (since Brown clearly would have won had he not made a wrong turn), or 4th place (if you count a virtual win from Brown and the fact that Kuzma and Mitch were there before I was). But whatever, it was fun.

The rest of the field trickled in over the next half hour or so, and the day was concluded by riding to Coopersmith’s and consuming many calories in beer and pizza. Awesome.