like smoking crack

My first triathlon was a gift to myself for passing my qualifying exams.

I had given up just about everything I liked to do during the year of preparation that led up to the exams. Of course, this is all retrospective recapping and I'm more than a little bit bitter about the whole thing. I spent most of the year either reading or agonizing; even when we did get out of the house for dinner at friends houses or dates, my mind remained caught in the grip of agonizing about what I had not finished reading and what remained to be read on my lists. My head was a bit like a non-stop game of Tetris, constantly shifting titles and authors from one to-do list to another. But after nearly a year of scrapped runs, swims, rides and walks, I felt like I desperately owed myself the gift of exercise.

It is perhaps a sign of my Type A personality that I swapped out reading lists for training plans. In any case, I pored over training plans with far more excitement than any of my literature. The print was even smaller than my texts, but at least I wasn't going to be tested on the material.

My first race was a sprint triathlon in Sacramento. We swam in the American River; it was a downstream swim in what was claimed to be 70-degree water. It was a bit chilly. I knew nothing about triathlon or open water swimming, which is apparent in the photo above: there I am, in the front of the entire pack. What I didn't know was that even in triathlons marketed at new triathletes, the swim is a full-contact sport. Women swam over me, banged into me, pulled at my arms and legs. It didn't take long for me--a very confident swimmer who has swum since birth, practically--to have a panic attack. Before the first turn, I was gasping for air and on my back. Eventually I calmed down enough to do sidestroke, and with one turn to go, managed to get back into a freestyle rhythm. Based on this photo, I'm either last or first (according to my team photographer, I was kind of in front. Somehow.)

Anyway, the water was cold. My feet remained frozen for the entire race. (But I did not sit down and massage them to try to get some feeling back in them, as I did to Mychal's great chagrin during my third race. That race was in October and the water was 62-degrees. I thought I had frost-bite and was about to lose a toe.) I biked the 11-mile course on the aforementioned 30-pound hybrid mountain bike with my back rack attached (with a not-too-shabby 16 mph pace) and pulled out a 27-minute 5K. It was my first race ever.

I almost cried when I crossed the finish line; at no point during the training did I really think I could do it. And the feeling of pride for finishing this was so much more joyful than the feeling of bitterness that followed my successful qualifying exams. Of course, two 24-hour written exams and one 3-hour oral exam don't produce endorphins quite the way that triathlon does. So that was my first taste of crack; that summer (2003), I did two more triathlons. And it's just gotten more addictive with each season since.