Saturday evening I spent gathering all my race stuff together: running top (I treated myself to a cute new blue one while I was waiting for my husband to come back from his bike portion of the Guelph Triathlon on the 26th July), bike shorts, helmet, riding gloves, bike, and bike shoes. Oh but wait, I had registered to do a duathlon, not a triathlon. Run, then bike, then second run. So I said to my DH, can you go and swap my pedals over from the clipless ones to the rat-traps please as I don't want to lose valuable time swapping from my running shoes, into the bike shoes and then back to running shoes. Then I realized – oh blimey! I sold my other racing bike and had to let it go with the rat-traps on it as I needed to keep the pedals that my shoes fit into.
So there we were at 9:30pm on a Saturday night wondering if there was anywhere we could get some pedals from. Of course the answer was no. Oh shoot! I wish I’d thought of it before then I could have bought a new pair. So that was my race position shot if I have to change shoes twice.
So resigned to a less than perfect result, I packed up the rest of my stuff, put Gatorade and water into the fridge, cool packs into the freezer and so to bed for an early night before the 5:30am alarm. The race registration was at 7:30 and Orangeville is about an hour away from us.
Anyway, morning arrives and the alarm goes off (all too soon of course) and hubby hops straight out of bed, throws on a pair of joggy bottoms and rushes downstairs to the garage! I hear clanking of tools and then the van opening and closing, but had no idea what he was up to. I was getting quite worried as I knew that we’d have to be leaving soon.
By the time he came back indoors I was showered and had coffee and breakfast made. He just nipped back upstairs, showered and dressed, etc. and then we had to be off. He said just wrap up his bagel and he’d eat it on the way. We also have those handy dandy travel mugs for the coffee so I filled those and we were off.
I asked what he was doing in the garage and he just gave me a cheeky grin and said “ah just wait and see” so, full of curiosity, I settled back to calm myself on the journey to the race.
10 minutes into the journey, guess what? The heaviest rain I’ve seen in a long time! We almost had to pull over as it was getting pretty impossible to see even with fast wipers, plus the road was so flooded that the van was lurching rather worryingly about the road while the tires aquaplaned on all the rain that couldn’t get down the drains in time.
We saw a few other vehicles with bikes on the back also slowing right down so we knew they were probably also heading to the same place we were, and also worrying about the race conditions.
Anyway, about a mile or so before our turn off it miraculously stopped raining, it was still very dull but at least the clouds weren’t leaking as well as hiding the sun.
We pulled into an exceptionally squishy car park (field!) and hubby told me to go and get my race kit (timing chip, race number and the ever important tee-shirt) while he checked my tires, etc. and he would bring over my bike and shoes.
So off I toddled, well sort of sloshed actually, over to the registration tent to get myself sorted out.
About 10 minutes later he came over, wheeling my bike and beaming ear to ear like a demented Cheshire cat! “Where are my bike shoes?” I asked, and he replied “look” and pointed at the pedals. To my astonishment there were a pair of rat-traps on there! Wonderful – but where did they come from?
He said he woke up in the night (as you do) and realized that the answer was staring us in the face, well hanging from the garage ceiling actually – the mountain bikes!!
The little love had remembered that we had rat-trap pedals on our mountain bikes so was hoping that they would be the same size thread to fit the racing bikes. This was why he wouldn’t tell me earlier, in case they didn’t fit he didn’t want to disappoint me if his plan didn’t work.
So, happy as a little mud lark (and looking a bit like one around the feet!) I hopped and skipped my way through the grass to put my bike on the extremely old chicks rack, right at the back of the transition zone.
The rain stayed away right through our race, although the road surface was rather slick with all the standing water and the grease that builds up over a long dry period. So after a run, bike and a second run I finished my race in 56min 04sec, a full 2min 16sec faster than last year’s race. I came overall position of 21st, and 9th in my own age group. Woo hoo! On the leaderboard for the first time, and I only started this triathlon malarkey last year, having never run in my life before, and not having ridden a bike since being a kid!
After I had finished the race, what with all the rain and mucky conditions I was looking like a Dalmatian from the knees down and a skunk with a stripe up the middle of my back from the back wheel throwing up a stream of gunk. Oh and a red Cheshire cat from the neck up having completed the race still standing and not last! Red because even though it was dull, it was still in the 30's at 9am and I was extremely hot.
I was figuring that next year I will stand a much better chance of getting a good position. This time I am 49 which puts me right at the back of the age range so am racing against some bright young 40 year olds, while next year at a sprightly 50, I’ll (hopefully) be whizzing past some folks who could be up to 59. I plan on carrying on as long as possible until one day I’ll just win by default, being the only one there in my age group!
There is another race next weekend at Grimsby and I’m looking forward to that one with renewed vigour. Now that I’m on the leaderboard, I plan to try and get there again!
