Two months late. So embarrassing, I know. But, wedding. So there.

You would think my Kinetic Spring race report would be short because, well, I didn’t do it. But you’d be wrong! So without further ado, here is an excessively long and late post about a triathlon I did not do.

I bailed three days before the race. And you know what? It felt great. The decision to do so was fraught, and pitted my self-imposed cycle (cycle!) of guilt against my desire to walk down the aisle unassisted by crutches or airboots in my sexy blue Manolos.

Since Nation’s (olympic tri) in early September, I had been on my bike a grand total of no times. That’s not to say I was behind on my cycling fitness. To the contrary, thanks to the impending wedding and dual pressures of vanity and attendant financial broke-ness, I was teaching up to ten classes a week of mostly spin. And throughout the very snowy (by DC standards) 2014/15 winter, I made time to deafen my fiancé, dog, and neighbors with rides on my trainer.

The problem was, is, and continues to be my fear and failure to build up my handling skills on my actual tri bike. (OK and swimming. The problem will probably always be swimming. [Wait, should I just be a runner?])

Without making excuses (I swear) the precipitation of this winter meant riding outside was not going to happen. It didn’t stop snowing and icing (yielding salty [read: bad-for-your-bike] roads) until March. And by March wedding obligations (my own and to others) took over the calendar. I wrote this original piece (that I’m just now publishing) from a plane after a weekend divided between a baby shower and meeting with my caterer and (one of my) planner(s) the weekend after Kinetic. The weekend before the race was my (out-of-town) bachelorette. The weekend before that, my shower/Scott’s bachelor party. The weekend before that, a friend’s out of town wedding. The weekend before that, the Cherry Blossom 10 (9.5) Miler. The weekend before that, a friend’s out of town wedding (in which Scott was a groomsman). And so on. And getting out on the road on a weekday is just not a possibility with my real world job and teaching schedule.

So as Kinetic approached and my time slipped away, I became anxious and unhappy about the race. And racing is way too expensive and time-consuming to be something that causes unhappiness. And I’m trying to learn from my crash and other injuries to not force things when the time is not right. It’s not worth the risk. So the Thursday before the Sunday race, I pushed past my guilt and decided I would watch from the sidelines.

That sidelines thing was at a minimum required. I’d volunteered to be the DC Tri Club race lead for the sprint, and I’d convinced Chris [see Rock N Roll USA Half Race Report for more on Chris] to do his first tri. I had to show up.

So on Sunday, May 10 at 5am, my race crush, and elite triathlete (omg she’s so fast and so cool,) Ellen and I (and Birkin!) loaded up Yoshi and made the around two hour trek to Lake Anna, VA from DC.

The night before I had indulged in a pre-race carb-load with Chris and speed demon, Mike (the fireman/EMT with whom I was riding when I crashed) despite the fact that the following day, I would be doing no strenuous activity requiring such a meal. Then I purchased lots of good post-race nutrition (tons of water, chocolate milk, pretzels, bananas, and more) for my DC Tri Clubbers. Once at the race, Ellen and I took several trips to unload all this nutrition, while the people who didn’t bail on the race wiggled into their wetsuits and engaged in pre-race, nervous rituals.

I was soooo happy not to be racing at that point. Whether novice or elite, pre-swim triathletes radiate a palpable nervous energy. I on the other hand was able to just focus on how excited I was for Chris to be taking on his first tri. He and Mike are friends of Scott, and I’ve gotten close to them through our mutual love for tris and road races. They’ve been really fun and supportive and welcoming as hell since I’ve known them, so I was pumped that Chris had (succumbed to our berating and) signed up.

And I was pumped that he’d gotten such a perfect day for it. It was a little warmer than most would have liked, but not too bad, and the water was (what I consider) a perfect 74 degrees. (Warm enough to make many question and ditch their wetsuits.)

Kinetic is a beach start, Chris went out with the novices in the second to last wave while Mike, and another friend, Ben, went in an early wave as 30-34 males. I find beach starts to be the least scary way to enter the swim leg, but Chris still had the classic first time tri experience of hitting the water and immediately regretting that he had ever signed up. He stuck it out of course, and from what I could see the waves were well spaced and the lake is just a beautiful place to swim.

As Chris ran up the chute to transition, Ellen, Birkin, and I ran up to a point a couple hundred meters into the bike. The bike and run legs at Kinetic start up a pretty legit hill. It can be an intimidating way to start, but the good news is you really do get the hardest part over with early on, when your legs are as fresh as they’re likely to be.

After Chris cranked past us we stayed put. It’s a big loop course, so we had a good view of folks both heading out and returning. Everything was going smoothly until cyclists started coming back in.  The race takes place in a state park, and the transition and finish line area are all conveniently located next to a big parking lot. And obviously the bike course takes place on roads, roads that are also used by cars. Before the race starts, organizers close the mile or so of this car road that leads into the parking lot as this is where the cyclists begin and end their rides.

And yet, no fewer than three idiot (car) drivers managed to come hauling down this supposedly closed stretch of asphalt. And as they did so, each one also managed to nearly take out cyclists, then stop abruptly so that racers had to also slam on their brakes and try to get around the uninvited vehicles.

Spectators and volunteers (myself obviously and strongly included) screamed at the cars to get out of the way and watch out. A couple of the drivers became irate with us, some tried to turn down the run course and take out racers on foot, one pulled sort of to the side and tried to abandon her car. Basically, it was a disaster. I don’t know how the race “organizers” let it happen (and repeatedly) but they are lucky as hell no one was actually struck. A few cyclists definitely lost time (or I guess added it) leaving me wondering if any of them missed PR-ing or podium-ing because of the (actual) traffic jam.

I’m pretty sure this wasn’t an issue last year. (At least I didn’t see anything like it last year, and clearly my experience represents the universally-agreed-upon truth of how things transpired.) Parenthetical joking aside, this was an epic fuck up and I will be considering it when I decide whether to ever register for this race again.

The rest of the day was not nearly so eventful. Though I did (get to) yell at a preteen who, when I wasn’t looking and without asking, jumped on an unsuspecting, slumbering Birkin. He’s a giant-but-shy shelter dog, and doesn’t even like ear scratches from strangers, so when I turned around to find a child (of advanced enough age she should have known better [as should her parents who were standing right there]) draped across my timid and panting and clearly-terrified pup, I let loose.

But really other than that the rest of the day at Lake Anna went well. Chris did great and was insta-hooked. (He’s training for Nations now and has become obsessed with [solidcore] too! I wonder how that happened…)

The only time I regretted not racing was when I saw the medals. And also when Chris and Mike got pizza. But, I did still get my sweet swag socks, and more importantly I got to walk down the aisle 3 weeks later unscathed in my strappy stilettoes.