Fighting fifty

Apologies for this digression from the Alexfest that you usually find here, but I have to get this out of my system.

Some birthdays slip by ordinarily and without fanfare. Others insist on being noticed. Some people age gracefully. Others of us fight it tooth and nail. I had a SIGNIFICANT birthday storm through recently and I am still in denial. As proof that it couldn't possibly be, I've taken up a new sport: the triathlon. Yup, today my oldest daughter and I participated in a triathlon. Quarter mile swim, 11 mile bike, 3 mile run. Not the hugest tri around, but since it was a first for both of us, it was a good place to start. Technically this was my 2nd triathlon. I participated in the Emeryville "Shortest Triathlon in the World for the Smallest City in the World" last April, but that barely counts. I did nearly zero training for that one (ok, I didn't do much training for this one). And it was tiny - 100 yard swim, 2.5 mile bike and 1.5 mile run. I did it just to be able to say I'd done a triathlon (who needs to say exactly how long the course was??) But small as it was, I had so much fun, I was hooked. I immediately started looking for someone to 'do a tri' with me. DD took me up on the offer and immediately started a training regiment. She was pretty good at not ragging on me too much when I took more days off than I trained.

Once again, it was a terrifically fun time. My biggest fear was the swim - at every swim practice I became more and more nervous about breathing in when my face was in the water. It was almost as if training was making me a poorer swimmer. But today I did fine. I was torn between swimming in my assigned heat (women, 40 and older) and the last heat (children under 16 and anyone why didn't want to push it). In the end, I swam in my heat, but stayed toward the back where I found other like-minded women and kindred souls attacking the swim portion of the race in a more leisurely fashion than those in the previous heats. I didn't hurry, I loved being in a lake again - it's been ages since I've been in a lake - and I was through the course before I knew it. In fact, I completed the swim and bike portion in 1 hour 3 minutes. Way faster than any of my times during training. When I got to the run, my legs were dumbfounded. Honestly, I heard them say to me, 'You have GOT to be kidding.' I considered sitting out the run. But I feared the lecture DD would rain upon me and decided even if I walked the entire 3.1 miles, that was better than listening to a lecture about quitting. So I plodded on. Literally. My goal was to finish the course in (don't laugh) under 2 hours. I did it in 1 hour 44 minutes. Darn, I could have walked a whole lot more on that run course.

So now I've proved it- I can't possibly be fifty yet.