Race Day

Race day is an interesting day. Interesting, at least for me, because I am a late blooming athletes that believes the only way to complete a race with success, is to follow the training guide like your life depends on it. I mean, if there are training guides listed on the internet, surely they have been tested and approved, so why reinvent the wheel...or pretend that I know what to do to successfully complete a duathlon?

And so, while my boyfriend and 17 year old son, both supposedly training for the race, are hardly even glancing at the training schedule, I had printed it out, posted multiple copies and checked it several times a day. In addition, I checked each workout off as I went, to make sure I didn't miss anything. All the while, I didn't say much because I knew that what they lacked in "rule-following", they would make up for in race-day gusto. Or was that male-ego?

I wasn't wired with race-day gusto, or ego. No matter how hard I trained, nor how hard I wanted to reach a specific finishing time, the race would ultimately decide my fate. I wouldn't.

We wake up before the sun on race day to recheck our gear and equipment and fill our bellies with warm oatmeal and a banana. My stomach is in knots, making the oatmeal difficult to swallow, but I keep breathing and begin my positive self-talk: You're ready for this. You have trained. It is cold and windy, but it is just weather. Just...weather. I then say a silent prayer that the two days on my road bike was enough to keep me fast and upright on the hills, and try not to cave into my fears that 'taper week' had successfully sucked all the strength from me.


I lose myself in preparing to leave and pretend that this is just about packing, not really racing. My mind seems to be sold on that until we actually arrive at the race, which is when I am certain that I don't even know how to run. That fear, though, gets completely lost in the next worry, as we head to transitions to set up our stuff and I begin to tremble. Not from fear at all, but from cold. The winds had picked up and while the temps were at a mere 40 degrees, it felt about 30.

I worried about frozen toes and being able to run on feet that I might not be able to feel.

I then asked myself again why I chose to race, when really what I prefered was the training. It was structured, gave my workouts a purpose and made me feel strong. I wondered why that wasn't enough. I wondered why I tortured myself through all the worry of racing, when the training really seemed to serve its purpose. I mean, wasn't this all about being strong and fit? What was the race going to prove that the training hadn't already?



When it was finally time to listen to last minute race directions, I thanked the weather gods for holding off on the rain, which might have been snow by now and stayed grateful that this was a duathlon and not a triathlon. That was all I could muster up in the way of being grateful, but hoped that would be enough to make my race an easy one.

That last wish was probably part of the problem, since my desire for race-ease, always takes over my desire to win once the gun goes off. It's not that I don't play full out. I do! It's just that when I start to feel winded, and am only five minutes into a 90 minute race, it seems appropriate to back off a little. It's at that moment when my goal becomes a strong finish, not so much a strong race.



I did begin the race wanting to place in my age category, but when I heard that there were only 150 participants, battled the winds and cold and unbelievably steep hills on the bike and by foot, and then saw my boyfriend right behind me and walking...I had a new goal.



"You don't have to slow down for me," he said.



"I'm not," I added, "but what's the hurry?" I said putting my arm in his while we took a walk break and then thought, I already got my trophy.



And at that, we proceeded to bring in the last leg of the race together, posing for each photographer, laughing as we went and pushing each other to the finish.



"Kick it in girl," he said to me when the finish line was in sight. "I'm right behind you..."



As I rolled up on the balls of my feet, and my legs pushed me across the finish, the meaning of race day became again all too clear. It wasn't about the training, my 17 year old eating up that race with no practice at all, nor my boyfriend finishing with me because he missed a turn. Race day was about showing up, facing some of life's greatest fears and then kicking in it to the finish...merely because I said I would.