Weekend HeaT

By 5:30 a.m. I had a massive pile of gear heaped in my living room, ready to pack into my friend Sarah's car. Bicycle, helmet, gloves, sleeves, cleats, sunscreen, wetsuit, body glide, Tri-slide, hat, running shoes, glasses, towel, fuel, water and on and on. Why the heck is triathlon so appealing? All this STUFF is required! Maybe I should just run.
We headed south for Santa Cruz, the site of the upcoming Surf City Long Course, our plan, to ride the 56 mile bicycle portion of the 70.3 mile race. I wanted to survey the course and assess my fitness; to make a final decision on whether or not to pull out of the race. The high stress job I had just quit had not left me enough time over the past months to train properly and my ability to finish a half Ironman distance was in question.
The course is gorgeous, winding first along West Cliff Drive through Santa Cruz then north on Highway 1 along the coast. Gently rolling hills make the course a fast one with only one semi steep short grade around mile 15. It was beautiful, I loved it, and was thinking the race might be doable. Then I got off the bike and into my running shoes and hit a wall. I barely made 2 miles of the run course and thought "No way! This sucks, I'm not doing the race". When I got back to the car, way before Sarah who had kept running, I checked my phone for the weather. It was 99 friggin' degrees! No wonder I couldn't run. If I had known it was that hot I wouldn't even have started. When Sarah finally got back to the car she had a glazed look in her eyes and said in a robot voice, "I'm going to get in the ocean RIGHT NOW!" I followed her down to the beach and cooled off in the chilly Pacific. After a cold beer and crab salad we headed back to the cooler SF Bay area where I still hadn't decided on whether or not to race.
The next day Sarah and I met up again for a swim at Cavallo Point. The water was a comfortable 60 degrees and after about 2000 meters I decided I could easily get through the 1.2 miles necessary for the race. OK, maybe I'll make it after all.
The next morning my knee was sore from where I had fallen on it the week before, my saddle sores were stinging in the shower, I didn't feel like working out and I decided I needed to go to my job more than I needed to spend 4 days in Santa Cruz, suck at a race, maybe even score my first DNF ever and possibly injure myself. I rolled my entry fee over to next year.
Next year hopefully life will cooperate and I'll have a schedule that allows for the training I'll need. In the mean time, I'll keep biking, swimming and running for fun but not in 99 degree heat!