"Tri"ed and Survived

We have done it!  The Dingo Dozen (minus deux) completed the triathlon they trained for throughout the spring.  Three adult competitors also successfully survived the race, and two phenomenal support crew (in the form of Michal and Ian) are the ones who truly deserve medals for putting up with one marathon of a day at a hot beach with ten kids who needed endless logistical instructions...bikes, helmets, goggles, bathing suits, sneakers, socks, staggered start times, motivational pep talks, and pre-race jelly fish sting treatment (never good).  The three adults competing in the triathlon had the easy job.

This was an off-road triathlon that provided many new challenges that I have never before encountered in my racing experience (and my triathlon racing experience is somewhat limited and very much in the distant past - at a time long before my body and soul had been corrupted by children). I am not sure why a year of running in a hot, flat rice paddy, bicycling everywhere on a one-speed wonder and occasionally swimming a few laps in a pool would be considered adequate training for a triathlon, but somewhere in my brain I decided that I would be fine.

The finish line beckons...

I knew it would be hot, but the crippling sun and baked desert earth that greeted us yesterday afternoon was shocking.  We were drenched in sweat before we even checked in for the race.  The logistics of getting ourselves to the start site were predictably complicated.  The beach in the middle of the desert did not exist according to our hotel staff. With much persistence, we were able to ascertain that it did, in fact, exist, and that it was 20 km outside of town - foiling our plan to have the kids ride their bikes to the start.  This also meant that we had to figure out how to get eight bikes and fifteen people into a taxi.  It took three taxis, much bike disassembling and shoving, and a long ride with various children piled on top of each other to reach our ultimate destination in the sun.

We endured the check-in disaster, the bike repair station, and mass child-feeding demands before contemplating our own race strategy.  One more glimpse at the sun told me the word of the day would be "survival."  So when I finally made it to the starting mass on the beach, I barely had enough time to find someone who spoke English and ask where exactly I was supposed to be going in the swim (not that I was worried that I would be leading the pack, but more out of fear that I would be left behind).  I managed to establish that we would be swimming a gargantuan triangle in the waves out there somewhere. Then someone counted down from five and people started sprinting down the beach toward a yellow flag.

Who's going to pee on my arm?

I took the slow and steady approach - preferring not to drown on the first leg of the race.  This didn't prevent me from reaching the first buoy at the same time as a hundred other desperately clawing triathletes intent on drowning me as we rounded the bend.  I somehow managed to gasp enough air and fight off the kicking legs and grasping arms to start the long straightaway to the next buoy.  My fabulously cheap swimming goggles did keep the sea water out of my eyes, but they completely fogged over, preventing me from seeing anything at all – underwater or above.  I felt like a blind swimmer negotiating my way through the waves thanks only to the occasional scratch or kick in the head from another swimmer to reassure me that I was still on course.  The one time I managed to get a glimpse of something through my goggles, it was a support boat with a super-sized cross bobbing in the swells.  I think the cross was designed to make it more visible.  In fact it just reminded me how easy it would be to slip under the waves and die – fittingly buried at sea under the cross.

Once I survived the fight to get around the second buoy and headed into the final straightaway back to the beach, I thought I was home free.  I thrashed my way toward the shoreline – tracking the furiously kicking feet in front of me – when I felt the sting of a jellyfish wrapping itself around my wrist.  I wanted to scream.  I wanted to cry.  I couldn’t see or breathe.  I was afraid that I was blindly swimming through a school.  My thrashing took on a more panicky style.  I cursed underwater.  I remembered why I had never done saltwater triathlons before (never mind that there is no salt water to be found in Vermont).  I wallowed in my misery for the final three minutes of the swim.  Then I had to stop wallowing.  I couldn’t very well run screaming onto the beach in search of someone willing to urinate on my arm when we had just spent hours convincing the kids that there were no sharks, jelly fish or other sea predators lurking in the waters in which they would soon swim.  I resigned myself to suffering in my own personal hell for the remainder of the race.

Don't think for one second that I'm a mountain biker.

Sadly, suffering is what I did, although it mostly had to do with the race itself and not the various shades of red my forearm was turning.  I transitioned quickly to the bicycle portion of the race and felt positively elated to be riding a bike with twenty-one speeds.  I sped along the flat, paved road flipping through the gears just because I could.  I marveled at how fortunate I was to be speeding along a smooth surface with a tailwind pushing from behind.  About twenty-five minutes into the course, I started to think that I should hit a turnaround point soon.  I positively flew down an enormous hill, sped around a corner and was confronted by Mt. Everest in the desert.  In front of me loomed an enormous behemoth of a hill where I could clearly see every other biker walking.  I was not to be defeated.  I had gears!  I would survive.  I down-shifted and down-shifted and down-shifted again until, finally, there was nowhere else to go.  I crawled up and over that hill in first gear before speeding down the other side only to be greeted with an even larger mountain.  At this point I was feeling rather sorry for myself…stinging arm, big hills, hot sun.  Little did I know that there was more fun ahead.  After surviving mountain number two, I turned off the pavement onto a dirt track in the barren desert where the real fun began. 

I am not a mountain biker.  I own and ride a mountain bike – sometimes on dirt roads, occasionally on paths, never on mountains, never in the desert, never over obstacles.  Now I found myself headed straight downhill on a rocky, sandy path.  The best strategy seemed to be to let myself go, to avoid large rocks, to avoid braking and to pray to the triathlon gods that someone would eventually find me if I catapulted over the edge of the trail into a desert abyss.  This strategy worked for a little while until I came upon the petrified mountain biker in front of me who would not let go of her brakes and was fishtailing all over the very narrow track. I tried the “on your left” strategy that I would use in a running race – unsure whether or not she spoke English or had any idea that I was asking her to get her fishtailing tail out of the way.  Her reply was, “I HATE this!” as she slid into a pile of sand. 

It turned out to be the pile of sand that marked the beginning of the “portage” section of this race (that no one had happened to mention prior to race day).    This is the point at which you were expected to carry your bike over sand dunes for the next kilometer.  I could not carry a bike on flat pavement on a cool day.  There was no carrying going on for me. I pushed, pulled and dragged my bike over this mountain of deep sand – cursing the entire time.  The “race” had become more about survival for everyone by this point.  No one was crazy enough to attempt to run or even jog.  Mostly people were just swearing and questioning the sanity of the race organizers.  I was participating in the “sprint” triathlon (with the relatively short 25 km bike portion), but those who had chosen the “stamina” triathlon were to complete this little desert loop three times.  I consoled myself with my good fortune at not having chosen the “stamina” option.

When I finally descended from that mother of all sand dunes back to the paved road, I was coated in red mud (another obstacle along the way) and a fine dusting of sand.  I cheerily turned right into a strong headwind and praised the beauty of pavement for the final thirty minutes of my ride.  I was thrilled to ditch that bicycle and switch to running after that 90 minute two-wheeled torture fest.

To add to the unplanned challenges of the day, the “off-beach” (as it was advertised) run turned out to be “off road” and very much “on beach.”  After my bicycle love affair with sand, I was undaunted by the prospect of waddling my way through another 5 kilometers in the sand unhindered by  an extra fifty pounds with wheels.  I shed my shoes and socks and settled in for a long slog along the beach.  It was remarkably pleasant.  I noticed the red color in my arm was subsiding.  The sun was setting.  There was a cool breeze.  None of the competitors around me seemed all that competitive.  They were all just happy to have survived the bicycling ordeal.  As I reached the halfway point and circled back toward the finish line, I started to wonder where I had missed John.  He had passed me very early in the bike race, yet I had not seen him on the run.  I would have expected to see him heading back as I was heading out.  I decided that either he had really beaten me badly (having finished the race before I even began running) or he had pitched over one of those desert dunes and had yet to be discovered.  As I neared the finish, I spotted him coming toward me – just beginning his run.  He was shaking his head.  His only words, “I did two loops through the sand dunes.”

My own personal hell shrunk considerably (it helped that I was nearly at the finish line).  I finished up my race and hustled over to the start of the kids’ race to take photos of their efforts.  John plodded through his final leg admirably well considering he had been through hell twice (having erroneously followed the “stamina” bikers into their second loop through the desert).

In the meantime, the kids had started racing (thank goodness for the support team that got them all to the start line). They swam well.  They survived a bicycle course that was almost comical in that they completed four laps requiring a sharp turn in sand that caused every other biker to wipe out (and then the following five bikers to pile on top of the original victim), and they sped through the beach run in admirable times.

The biggest smiles came at the end of the race when Michal broke out the M&Ms to reward them for their efforts and put off the starving Dingos until our post-race BBQ on the beach.  Mission accomplished.  The Dingo Dozen did themselves proud.

The day in photos...

It's always good to get a good night's sleep before race day
(after your three hour Nerf battle).



Carb Loading at Breakfast



      

    

   

Marge!

The support crew

The pre-race swim

Lilly and Bri



Foster



Bri and Cutuon



Lilly

Crazy Dingos

Fynn

Future's so bright...

Waiting to load the bikes into taxis...

Arriving at the race

Race Registration

       

Checking out the bike

  

Pre-race Snuggle

Catherine, the "stamina" athlete

The "before" picture

Foster is out of the water

Theo sprints hard

Brianna still smiling

Lilly powers through the sand

Mikayla running strong

Cutoan nears the finish.

Foster still smiling at the finish

The three gecko children's racers
Theo, Fynn and Nolan

Post race meat feast at the BBQ on the beach

Making new friends at the BBQ

WINNERS!

    

Nolan wins a raffle prize - a night at a resort!

Late night beach fun

Champions!