Triathlons are from the DEVIL...

I knew, when I got passed by the 74 year-old Woman and the One-legged Man, that it was going to be a very (VERY) long day...

EXT. GUELPH LAKE-HIGH NOON

He stands at the water's edge ready to go. All 'round him are men his age, some older. Heats '1' and '2' have already gone. The foam of them disappearing near the first bouy-marker.

The water is choppy.

Very choppy.

HORN.

He races into the water, jostling for room. 

Dives.

Front crawl. He's killing it, passing swimmer after swimmer.

FADE OUT

And if it had ended there it would have been fine.  Turns out, of the four family members who did the race with me I was the fastest swimmer. 17:45. A totally respectable time.

But then came the bike.

Oh, the bike.

See, it was our first Triathlon, we weren't sure if we were going to like it, and as a result figured it didn't make any sense to get snazzy bikes the first time out.  "Nah..." , we thought, "We'll just do it on our Mountain Bikes. I mean, how much difference can there be?"

A lot, turns out.

(we DID tune up my wife's bike, getting her skinnier road tires etc. but that sounds like an excuse...)

A whole (insert expletive here) LOT!

I was right in the respectable middle of my heat at the Bike transition.  I will admit to already feeling like I was going to die and, after the fact, I found out I might have been justified, as our friend who did the Triathlon with us (and is a veteran of five or so other ones) told us the swim was the toughest he'd ever done.

So I get on my bike, start pedaling as fast as I can and...

Start getting passed.

Literally, hundreds of times.

When the 74-year old woman blew by me like I wasn't even moving (and I was pedaling faster than her) I almost quit.  How did I know she was 74? They write your age on the back of your calf so they can make sure you leave in the right group.

I swear her calf smirked at me as it piston-ed past...

Then my chain fell off.

No joke.  Just coming down a hill, starting to climb another, chain pops off.  Jams in the gears. Takes me a good five minutes to get it fixed.  Whizz! Whizz! Whizz! The 'real' bikers keep blowing past me 'causes now I really AM at a standstill.

It was downright disheartening.

By the time I got to the FIRST 5KM marker I almost puked.  I mean, how could it have only been five kilometers?  My whole LIFE is flashing in front of my eyes, my lungs are SCREAMING, my old groin injury from my U of T football days is flaring up, the old ladies are laughing at me as they fly by.

This day is SUCKING big time.

I should have been ready for it.  Four different dudes came up to me before the race, looked at my bike and said four different versions of, "Man, you're brave. This is going to SUCK for you!"

And it did.  Oh it did.

I finished the bike, more exhausted than I've ever been in my life.  Got back to the transition area and it looked like everyone else (EVERYONE!!) had already arrived.  I had gone from maybe the hundredth person (when I started the bike) to the 1,400th person (out of 1,500). That's how (insert ANOTHER expletive here) BAD the bike was for me.

And NOW I've got to run 5K!

I, literally, almost died.

I mean, I don't have words to express how much my lungs were hurting, how dead my legs felt, how LOUD my groin was screaming.  It was just downright terrible.

Add to the fact that when I'm STARTING my run the ONE-LEGGED-MAN (seriously) is FINISHING his.

For a relatively competitive guy like me this was as close to ridiculous as I've ever allowed myself to experience.  Oh yeah, that and the fact that the Father who had TOWED his Autistic boy behind him in a trailer on the bike was AHEAD of me at the start of the run.

I did pass him eventually, but felt no joy at it.  I still had at least thirty 55+ Women in front of me, plus he was PUSHING a TRAILER with his SON in it!

1K,  there goes my sister (who came first overall in our family) on the other side, smiling, almost done. 1.5 K, there goes my wife, (who had the fastest run time in our family) passing people on the uphill portions--can't even look at her I'm so on the edge--there goes my brother in law (he had the fastest bike time). 2K, there goes my Ministry Associate's wife, smiling at me. My Ministry Associate (the one who'd done five of these?) he's been DONE for more than 45 minutes at this point.

If only I can get to the 'turnaround'...

The turnaround. 2.5K left. "Oh sweet Baby Jesus, if I die please take care of my kids..."

There's that 74 year old woman again.  Still in front of me.

"Okay, I got to do something about this..."

So over the last 1.5K I dug deeper than I EVER have in my ENTIRE life and picked up my pace. At 1K to go I started passing the old women. 750M to go and I'd passed all (30) of them. 

Now I really feel like I'm going to die.  Really.

I can hear the sound of the finish line.  I feel no joy at it.

I round the last corner.  There's a dude shouting at me, "You're doing AWESOME only 150 meters to go!"  I'm thinking, "AWESOME? I'm sucking buddy. I'm sucking so bad I'm embarrassing my ANCESTORS! I'm sucking so bad I don't care if I die. I'm SUCKING so bad I'm going to be mortified when I tell everyone about this. I'm sucking so bad, everyone I know who thinks I'm an out of control egomaniac is going to REJOICE at my frickin' failure!"

I actually let out a groan of deepest pain when he told me there was a WHOLE one-hundred-and-fifty-meters to go.  

Final stretch. Fans along both sides. They're cheering, but what they're really thinking is:

"Why is a 36-year old (seriously, look at his calf...) coming in just barely ahead of all the old Women? He must be one of those dudes running despite the fact that he has a terminal disease!  Must be, there's no other explanation. 'Way to go buddy! You're an inspiration to all of us!'..."

No I'm not, I just had the worst bike EVER which made me have to work harder than everyone else and still come in just up from DEAD LAST!

25M to go. My wife is smiling at me, steps out to give me a 'high five'. 

I wave her off. Don't even look at her.

Not 'cause I'm mad at her or anything I just, literally, truthfully, honestly with all my heart, didn't have the strength to shift my gaze or move my arm or acknowledge her love.  I would have collapsed right there.

Instead I start having a BREAKDOWN.

(I hope you're enjoying this, you sick voyeurs, you...)

Seriously, I start sobbing.  

Why?  'Cause all of a sudden, as I'm nearing that finish line so pathetically, so close to 'last-to- finish', so embarrassed, so humiliated, so spent, all of the failures in my life start washing over me. I think about high-school math, blowing my University experience 'cause I was broken-hearted over the loss of my 'first love' (little did I know it would turn out to be a good thing but at the time it hurt real bad...), quitting University football just when I was getting good 'cause my linebacker coach hated me 'cause I was a Christian, my first TV series getting cancelled, my second TV series nearly bankrupting us, my first church plant ending so badly (for us), my first movie nearly killing us and driving us to bankruptcy (again), my 2008 TV series (2 of 'em) not getting renewed even though they should've been (based on ratings), the spiritual wasteland that was 2007-2009 for me, that time I got unjustly 'blacklisted' by a bunch of jerks, how lousy a Father I sometimes feel I am, my current TV series STILL being in limbo, all the sin, all the pride, all the vanity, all the dreams that have fallen by the wayside, ALL THE WAYS IN WHICH I'VE FAILED AND IN WHICH I SUCK AND IN WHICH I'LL NEVER BE THE GUY I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO BE WHEN I WAS 17...

Wash over me in an instant...

And I lose my shit.

('sorry' for the the vocal expletive 'church people' but it's the simple truth...)

Yes, I finish.  Balling my eyes out I finish.  I think some people were laughing at me.  I'd like to go back and punch them in the eye.  I stagger over to the first shade I can find (yes, our day that was supposed to be 'cloudy and cool' turned into 35 and blazingly sunny) and collapse, weeping like a child.

I'm vaguely aware of some people hovering over me.  I think it's my wife and family and friends.

I wave them off.

"GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!" 

And they do.  Leaving me lying on the ground utterly lost and spent and brokenhearted.

(my wife came back a couple minutes later 'cause--as a fitness trainer--she's been taught that people who are as spent as I was after an endurance race like we'd just done have a tendency to go off alone and die.  She actually said to the rest of them, "I've got to go make sure he doesn't go die in a bush somewhere...")

THAT, dear readers, was my Saturday.

For a good hour afterwards every second or third word out of my mouth was a swear-word and my lungs and diaphragm hurt so bad (from all the labored breathing) the day after that it *actually* hurt me to preach.

I learned that:

-85% of life is mental. It was only determination that kept me going.

-I didn't prepare hard enough. Next time I train harder for the run.

-You need the right tools.  Next time I'm buying a proper (insert another expletive here) BIKE!

-I'm not a person who likes to be pushed that far, therefore, I'm going to push myself there again.

-Suffering really is a spiritual experience.

So, August. Orillia. 'Round Two'.

Those 74-year old ladies and one-legged-men better watch out 'cause I'm gonna' do better this time.

I'm gonna' do better.

You watch.

Take that and do somethin' with it ya' bunch of sick voyeurs...

;)

T