Timelessly, Wildflower

Lake San Antonio.

Race Morning

The day was supposed to be hotter, but with less wind than they'd had for the long course race the day before. I figured that was a fair trade as I looked out over the lake while wrapping up in a blanket, not quite awake yet but definitely no longer asleep. It was around 6:00 a.m., I'd fallen asleep the night before around 3:00 a.m., and coffee needed to happen.

It was early and the air was already charged. I waited to feel ready and confident, to feel that surge of assurance you're supposed to get after having done this a while and having overcome obstacles. It didn't come, so I tried to review the things I'd kept myself awake thinking about. Just do your best... hills are hills...Temecula, Wisconsin... temporary... just don't come apart...

"Trace, we're heading down..."

"OK, I'm coming; go ahead I'll catch up." I heard myself say over a static in my head sort of electrical buzz. After some final checking around, I grabbed my transition bag and rode my bike down to the pontoon as my friends yelled to me.

"Good luck, Tracy! We'll catch you on the run!"

"Good luck! You're ready!"

Overlooking transition.

It was unbelievable to see the crowds packed just as full as the half-Iron race the day before, and almost instantly I heard random people discussing the looming Lynch Hill just outside of T1. 10% grade... winding for a mile... whew...don't listen...

"CRAP!"

"Whoa, what?" My teammate, Michelle, looked concerned as I rummaged through my transition bag after setting up.

"Man, I can't find my flat kit. It was just right here...bu-… wh-... who steals something in transition!?" I'd sworn I'd just seen it, and was more upset by the outrageous idea of someone actually stealing my kit in transition than I was about the fact that it was gone. And upon reflection, yes, I suppose this likely makes me more naive than I should be, but deep down I guess I'd rather live giving the benefit of the doubt and suffer occasionally being proven wrong, than live assuming the worst and then revel in cynical pride for being right. I got back to myself after a minute or two, and thought I must have just dropped it somewhere. That felt better.

"You still have 40 minutes before our waves, I have some money if you want to run up to the expo and get another one."

We did the math... 10 minutes to hike up the hill, 10 minutes to find the store and buy another kit, 10 minutes to hike back down, 10 minutes to get in my wetsuit and get down to the water....

"F#*%!"

Michelle gave me $14.00, all she'd brought with her, and I ran like hell back through the expo.

...30 minutes until the wave.

I wound up being $9.00 short by the time I replaced my levers, tube, and cartridge kit, and so asked the Tri-Zone rep if I could leave my race number and an I.O.U. for after the race. He smiled as he replied, "…sure, no problem..." and I'll never forget how good that exhale felt.

...20 minutes until the wave...'what if I don't?'...no, no, no.

"Excuse me... excuse me...I'm racing I need to get through, excuse me guys, excuse me... guys!"

...15 minutes until the wave.

"Michelle!" I stuffed the new kit into my Bento box.

"Hey! Here, here get your wetsuit..." I doused my arms and legs with baby powder and pulled it on.

"I can braid my hair when I get down there, yeah? Yeah... yeah I can." 13...12...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzip.

...10 minutes until the wave.

"OK let’s go!"

"Excuse me...excuse us... ow... excus-"

"UP NEXT, WAVE 19! LET’S SEND THEM OFF RIGHT, SPECTATORS!"

"Excuse me... excu-"

6…

"FOUR MINUTES LADIES!"

Swim waves getting ready for action.

"Tracy! Hey!! Tracy!!" Iron Jenny yelled intently across a billion multicolored caps. "Hey, you dropped this outside the RV, we'll get a volunteer to put it on your bike, what's your number?"

And then the noise, the commotion, the thinking in 87 different directions... stopped. For a minute everything stopped, and as the roaring crowd muffled I could hear my heart pounding in my chest. I felt it all come together; it seemed I'd finally talked myself into believing it didn't matter what happened next, maybe because my faith in people had been confirmed with the found flat kit, complemented by my friends for tracking me down to give it to me - in the Tri-Zone guy’s trust, as well as in Michelle’s unhesitating generosity and lack of demonstrated concern about her own wave soon to cue out.

It was all just suddenly very simple. I truly wasn't worried about time or performance or judgment or anything else that had kept me up most of the night. I was only concerned with seeing what I'd built so far this season. I decided then that I wouldn't check my splits throughout the entire race, in fact I hadn’t even worn a watch, so apparently I’d already subconsciously made this decision. Instead I'd just be there in the moments as they happened rather than constantly worrying about those to come, and with seconds to go, I waved to my friends while standing there next to Stronger, then put my arm around her and squeezed.

The Swim

Swim start.

I hate the feeling of other people's bubbles... I remembered this about 100 yards out, and laughed to myself at how far I'd come since I felt this way. As soon as I could get free of the torrent of arms and elbows, I found a relatively quick pair of feet to draft behind, and when I lost it, found another. The swim became a methodical process of finding feet and sighting with the occasional reminder to pace myself. I was calm, my 2XU wetsuit - with officially one open water swim in it - felt good and fit well, and as far as I could tell this race was off to a damn good start.

It was good to see plant particles again instead of pool lines, and it was good, after so long, to not have any walls.

And on to the bike!

Quite literally before I knew it I approached the ramp leading to T1, and blew my friends a kiss as I exited the water. When I heard Julie Moss narrate my actions, I felt invincible and started running while unzipping my wetsuit, having no idea or care for how long I’d taken. My bike rack was still relatively full back in transition, and that was just fine by me.

Spectators lined the outskirts as I trotted my bike through the T1 exit, while a new friend, Brad, patted me on the back and cheered me the rest of the way out towards the infamous Lynch Hill.

So, guess I'll go see what all the fuss is about...

The Bike

I did, actually, have time to wipe my nose before hitting Lynch Hill, and upon doing so smiled to myself. That's really about all I had time to do though before the staircase to heaven unwound before me. Holy sh*#...

Photo courtesy of Jeff Wrigley.

My legs started to burn a bit as the grade steepened, so I reminded myself that it was only a mile, that it wouldn’t go on forever, and that incline insanity like this is what made it Wildflower, after all. Almost immediately my teammate Chris appeared, along with new and old friends Jeff, Trisha and Triboomer, all whom had done the half-Ironman the day before. They ran with me and cheered and made me feel that invincible feeling not only then, but for the duration of the winding ascent. There is nothing like having your friends cheer for you. Nothing.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Wrigley.

Before I knew it I was at the top of the mountain, and on my way out to the rest of the ride thinking I’d already done the hard part, but the entire bike course was littered with hills damn near as steep and long as Lynch. No one told me about those. These hills were sliced straight off of the Ironman Wisconsin course and breaded in those from Temecula. In all, I think there were five or six gruesome climbs with equally intimidating widow-maker downhills, and as I flew down one of them I heard a crash and a scream behind me. Within minutes I saw an ambulance race past. I cringed, not wanting to know what had happened, and was suddenly just thoroughly grateful it didn’t happen to me.

I was grateful time and time again it wasn’t me when I saw someone walking their bike back, broken chain dangling. Yes, the hills were that steep, and from the first casualty I saw I made a mental note to shift carefully on the climbs.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Wrigley.

Ironically, though there were tons of steep hills, I really loved this part of the race. I tried to encourage those I could while climbing, and when I myself had to really work, managed to find levity thanks to the conveniently occurring, random butt crack poking out in front of me. You can’t suffer too much with a butt crack bobbing up and down straight down your center line, after all. 15 miles gone... so far, so good.

Fortunately, I didn’t need to stop at any of the water stations as my bottle of Perpetuem, bottle of Nuun, and bottle of water carried me through, and around mile 15 I really started to appreciate the benefits of the RaceCaps I’d taken before the swim. There was no crazy surge, I just didn’t feel tired from the efforts of the day thus far, and this was a first for me some three quarters of the way through the second leg of a race. In fact, I was fairly certain this was about as good as it got for riding straight up to God.

When I rode the final descent into T2, I was truly afraid for the first time since the horn went off that morning. There were downhill runners on the course, a lot of them, and my mileage was quickly creeping up to and passing 40 mph. This was just plain dangerous. I shouted "LEFT!!!" repeatedly to the riders in front of me who were braking, but not getting out of the way, which would allow those behind them to safely pass. I could only assume they didn't want to ride that closely to the blind from behind runners, but if they didn't move, they, along with the runners, were going to get mowed down by those of us not so conservative with our brakes. It would just take one rock in the road to start the avalanche.

33 mph... 35 mph...

"Left! LEFT!!!"

"HEY, YOU NEED TO MOVE OVER!!"

37 mph...

"...LEFFFFFFFFFFT!"

It was nerve racking. I didn’t want those sirens coming for me, or anyone else thanks to me.

After several numbing minutes, I took a breath worthy of the exhale I let out at Tri-Zone before the race started, having cleared the downhill and pulled into T2 sans carnage of any kind.

The Run

I have never felt as good starting a run after a swim and a ride as I had this fine day, even though, according to many, the hardest part was yet to come. There were still more California hills. About five miles before the end of the bike I slammed a Hammer gel and called it good for the first three miles of the last leg, in fact, I felt so good I joked with the volunteers at the water stops as I ran through, "Hey, aren't you guys supposed to be naked!?" I hurried through - blushing - as a few of them shouted back, "If you want us to be!" and then began to make it a reality. HA!....Yikes!

Almost immediately I saw more of my friends on the sidelines as they yelled and cheered, I had no idea about my bike split and no idea about my current pace. I was just happy to be out there and to be feeling as awesome as I felt.

Soon thereafter I met one of the many steep hills, ...omg, I am so not running up that... It was the kind of hill that from the bottom you can't see the top, and from the top can't see the bottom, and anywhere in between you just feel like you'd fall off the end of the world if you went in either direction. About halfway up my legs started to burn a little, so I had the bright idea to walk up backwards.

Bad plan.

AGH! Hey whatcha thinkin' there brains!? It hurt so badly that for a second I laughed out of shock. This was officially the worst cramp I'd ever had. Ever. I stretched for a second but my hamstring didn't feel any less like someone was twirling it up linguine-like around a fork. Omg.....argh... yeah...bad plan. The next five minutes of life sucked quite monumentally, but at the top of the hill I saw yet more of my friends, "Hey! There she is! Here comes our Wil!" They exploded in cheers. My cramp was gone.

The mile four marker either descended from on high, or apparently blew in with the wind and erroneously stuck itself in the ground just after that ridiculous hill. I absolutely couldn't believe there were only two miles left to go, and started mentally ticking off the 31s, 32s, and 34s on the calves I passed. Two women in particular and I kept leapfrogging each other, and I decided to try to catch them when I saw them on the crazy grade downhill heading towards the finisher's chute. The first of them was lean and blonde, wearing pink shorts and an Adidas top. I remembered her from the bike, I thought, but I hadn't really been paying attention to the other athletes up to this point - well, unless it was to avoid making them into road art on some of the sick descents.

Now see, downhills can be fun on the bike, but on the run they leave something to be desired. I didn't even want to know the state my knees would be in post race as I blew down the hill, but something inside me remembered that it wasn't post race yet.

Pinky got closer and closer and closer until I no longer saw her ahead of me at all, and I can't even count overtaking the other woman who had started walking before hitting the bottom of the hill. There were no more women in my age group the rest of the way to the chute, only 20-somethings, the best I could tell anyway.

"There's Tracy!! GO TRACE! WOO HOO!!"

"Yeah there you go! Check you out! GOooooo!!!"

All of my friends, all together, cheering and proud. I hadn't looked at the clock all day until just then when I passed under it, and only then by accident.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Wrigley.

"AND HERE COMES TRACY KORN FROM INDIANA! WHOA, SHE’S A LONG WAY FROM HOME!" I heard the announcer say that fine California afternoon.

But you know something? That day, I didn't at all feel like I was.