6:29:47
Starting there, since that’s probably what everybody’s first question is. But now let’s go in proper order.
We arrived in Gdynia on Thursday evening and I got my race number (and all that stuff) on Friday. I first tried doing it at noon, but the line was insane, so I left for lunch and returned later. It was a smart decision – there was minimal line when I came back. I think it had to do with the IronKids race – people came with their children, so decided to pick up their stuff at the same time. It turned out I couldn’t get anything else done on Friday, so I did a bit of shopping and took the ‘mandatory’ picture with my name on the car and the IronMan sign 😊
The weather was bad Saturday morning, especially on the sea. I heard that 120 people quit the sprint distance in the water (I don’t know out of how many). My anxiety was in high gear the whole time. I did get my bike rental though (logistically, bringing my regular one that far would have been a nightmare, so I opted for a rental). I thought I would quickly drop it off before going to the pre-race briefing in Polish (it was earlier and Polish is my native language, so I thought I would get done earlier). Well, ‘quickly’ didn’t happen. The line was absolutely insane! I also completely did not anticipate that they will make me put on the helmet and take a picture, so results are as one could expect. That hair! 😆
I was already starting to freak out and I was really trying to figure out what to do. And oh, the anxiety of being fully convinced that I forgot something and it will make racing impossible! Fortunately, there were other people around and they were happy to chat and joke around. I agree also with the bike just a couple of feet from mine – there was no fear that I would be so fast (or slow) that I would be all alone at any point. Just follow the crowds! The weather had a nice surprise for us, too: a rainbow over the sea. I decided to take it as a good omen. I am not superstitious at all, but I really needed something to cheer me up and that did the trick:
I did eventually make it to the briefing, although I heard only the last couple of minutes of the Polish one, so I stayed for the English one. Sadly, it rained a bit and I didn’t bring an umbrella… Oh, well! The briefing was full of entertainment, courtesy of some drunk guys. I am pretty sure they were not the competitors… As far as I am concerned, only one important thing was said during the briefing: wetsuits were mandatory. I even asked if it’s ok that mine is sleeveless and they said that it was fine. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. Well, they allowed it. More on that later though.
I will skip talking about the pasta party the night before… Suffice to say that when I was there, the pasta was cold and they only had sparkling water. This was probably the only part of the event I could complain about. And I won’t complain – they fed me after all! (I am always hungry, so feeding me is always a good way of getting on my good side LOL).
I was so stressed about the race that I didn’t manage to get any sleep! I actually had a minor meltdown in the morning, which actually made a family member of mine laugh. I was doing it by my own choice with nothing depending on it. The day before, I got to have lunch with a family friend who used to be my English teacher when I was little (she was a family friend long before I was born and she will remain one for all eternity) and she told us the story how I used to freak out every time I would get something wrong when trying to speak English. Mind you: it was extracurricular with only 3 kids there, there were no grades or anything else at stake. She said herself: stakes couldn’t have been any lower if we tried. Yet I would still freak out if I got something wrong. Apparently that’s a permanent personality trait of mine 😅. Between those two things, my mind went to a much better place, although I was still rather stressed.
I made it to the beach way before the 8am start and got to take a couple of pictures. There were a lot of other competitors and their personal support around. It was really cool!
But I got to see one very Polish thing that made me laugh really hard. In Poland, people coming to the beach tend to bring their own screens and put those around blankets. They stake out a piece of the beach for themselves that way and it tends to get obnoxious. It’s not exactly a high class thing (if you know what I mean). As we were all getting ready to start the race, there was a family in the middle doing it. We call it ‘parawaning’ and it was absolutely ridiculous (I probably owe them a thank you note for providing comic relief):
Well, we did eventually line up. Good news: there was no waves. I have seen lakes with worse waves than what was there! Please excuse the lack of corral pictures… I lined up based on my anticipated finish time of 40 minutes. Something I did not expect: out of ~2000 participants, only 250 were women. Translation: I was surrounded by men. I couldn’t see another woman in that corral. It doesn’t help that I’m 5’3″ (on a good day). At the time, I actually didn’t know how male-dominated the race was. I was just trying to figure out what happened to all the women.
I got to stand next to guy named Maciek. If he reads this: Thank you for keeping me entertained! The wait for the start was LONG. They were doing a rolling start every 10 seconds and I was quite far back. I got to watch everybody around sweating like crazy. I am used to heat (thank you, DC summers!), so I was fine, but others around me weren’t doing so great. Eventually, my turn came. I ran into the water and that’s where the trouble started! The water was 16C (so ~60F). Remember how I said my wetsuit was sleeveless? Yeah, I regretted that. I was FREEZING! Well, my arms were. My wetsuit is pretty thick, so it kept the rest of me warm. But it felt tight around the neck. And when I started swimming, I immediately started to panic. How was I going to do it for 1.9km??? I am not ashamed to admit it: I was seriously about to quit within first 200 yards! I had no idea what I was doing. Water had zero visibility. There were jellyfish in there. And have I mentioned that it was cold? Most of my body was covered by the wetsuit, but my hands and my feet were sticking out, freezing and touching the gross critters. All I wanted was to get out of there, take a warm shower and get some sleep. I know that those moments were nothing to be proud of. But I also think it’s important for others to hear about it, since it is something that might happen to you and it helps to know you are not alone with that feeling. It’s scary and discouraging.
Based on the fact that I finished, you must have figured out I found a way to deal with it. Here is what happened next: I told my inner voice to shut up, I have done other open water races, although none of them in a wetsuit. I reminded myself that I have trained a lot in the pool (not in open water – probably a mistake, but open water is not exactly an option around here). I love the water. I’m good in the water. I can do it. To be honest: this is a VERY sanitized version of what I told myself. And then I slowed down my moves, started counting my arm stroked (I tend to do that even in the pool – it keeps my movements well paced and I don’t care if anybody thinks it’s stupid since it works for me). I quickly learned one thing: I started way too far back. I spent the entire swim portion of the triathlon on passing people. It’s a good thing that those tall, strong dudes couldn’t see that the person passing them was a tiny woman… It actually turned out for the best for me though: I got to swim a lot in between groups of people and I didn’t get kicked too much. As I was getting pulled out of the water, I glanced at my watch. It said 35 minutes 😮. Then I started to stumble around trying to figure out what I was doing… That’s when I heard voices of my family cheering me on. It really helped! I think that importance for support and cheering is way underestimated!
Can you tell where I heard them? Well, my swim time ended up being 38:02, so I clearly bounced around for a while before I got to time check there (I have no idea where that happened). I moved through T1 slowly. Partially on purpose, too – I was trying to catch my breath before biking, which is the hardest part for me. I eventually got on a bike and it started ‘uphill’ immediately: it was on cobblestone and I couldn’t clip into my bike. The whole time, my family was cheering for me (great) and filming my attempt to take off (embarrassing, considering all the fumbling!).
And then, it was off! I am a pretty slow rider, at least relative to other competitors. You can see how much I dropped in general classification on the picture at the end. I just kept seeing people pass me, especially every time I hit an uphill. But I kept going. I had a borrowed triathlon watch. It was an awesome watch, but I fumbled it. You could see on the video above that I wasn’t doing well out of T1. And then on top of it, I was trying to remember how to get the watch from T1 to bike. It didn’t go well… I started it about a mile after getting out of the gate. No matter, the watch was there just to have a general idea of my progress. This is where the issues started actually: it was in metric system, but I train in the US and my watch is in miles 😅. For better or worse, it kept me entertained for those 3:20:11 – I kept trying to convert kilometers into miles and miles into kilometers pretty much the whole time. Objectively, this time isn’t great. Subjectively, this was my best time over the 56 mile distance. I was proud of myself and looked good for pictures when I knew they were taking them:
Although this is probably way more representative of the look on my face during the bike stage of the race 😆:
Couple of notes on the ride:
I’m impressed by people who hand out water and iso to cyclists. I would have been scared! Actually, I was scared trying to grab that stuff from them. But I did and I am glad I did.
Wind sucked. I was told that the wind wouldn’t be bad. In Gdynia, there was basically no wind. Inland, on the other hand, had some pretty serious gusts.
I got HUNGRY along the way. Fortunately, I packed some candy. I can’t stand all those nutritional stuff they give you. I am yet to find one that’s not 🤮.
Taking candy out of back pocket when you are getting hit by gusts of side wind isn’t easy. I actually had to abandon a few attempts and hold on for dear life. I eventually made it through one pack.
The route was gorgeous!!!
Apparently I am still scared of high speeds on turns. I slowed down a few times when I probably didn’t need to. Or at least not quite as much. It was a rented bike I didn’t know as well though and I still have that crash from a month ago on my mind. One of the turns was objectively really dangerous though. I am not speaking from experience – they padded the outside of it with bales of hay. Also: clearly a lot of people didn’t make it through some of the turns. I know because I saw them covered in blood later on. I am pretty sure I would have had to have another serious talk with myself if I crashed because I would have been tempted to withdraw.
You know how I said that I was convinced that I would be always next to somebody? Well, by the end, people stretched out so much that I was alone. I ended up yelling on some turn asking which way to go.
I got passed by a lot of people on bike, but I am still happy with my time. I rode with average of 16.8mph and that’s good for me. I made it in one piece with plenty of time to spare. I can improve, but then: who can’t?
I really wish I could forget T2… I wasn’t moving too fast to begin with, since my banged up foot was bothering me when trying to run in bike shoes (I went to ortho today – I have a bruised bone from my accident a month ago). I changed, ate some more of my candy and got ready to go. That’s when I noticed that my helmet was missing. I spent a couple of minutes trying to find it… I will be writing a whole another article on lessons I learned during this race, but here is a free bee: if you lose some marked piece of gear, just go. It will turn up on its own eventually. But then I finally got on my feet and started running.
Based on the fact that I have already ran 5 marathons, I am pretty sure you can all guess that this is the sport I’m most comfortable with in competition setting and I knew exactly what I was doing. And you would be right. My foot was hurting some and I knew I wasn’t going to be fast, but I picked a pace and decided to stick to it. I know it wasn’t an impressive one and I didn’t really know how it related to my usual runs (remember – the watch was on metric system, which is not how I have everything calculated and committed to memory). A few people commented on my running that I should pick up the pace. I was happy to pass them later on… But unlike them, I have enough class not to comment on other competitors’ paces. Even when they were running out of steam and opting for walking. We all had our own work to do!
Since the run portion was in form on 3 loops around downtown Gdynia, there were so many people cheering, music and general excitement! I love hearing the crowds and it made it easier for my daughter to cheer for me. I waved at her and yelled back to her every time I saw her along the way! Here is the back of her head – she is the little girl in teal (not blue LOL) shirt and purple skirt. Sometimes I don’t understand her outfit choices… Anywho… It was so great to hear mini-me come out and cheer! It made me so happy!
I enjoyed running through this arch. They had an announcer there and he called me ‘pink obsession’ on my first lap. And the other two laps. It made me chuckle. I loved that – I was already like 5 hours into the race and any distraction from the pain and being stuck in my head was welcome.
So one more thing about that arch: have you noticed on the first picture that there was a mist? Apparently it was hot and they had cooling stations along the way. The high was maybe 85F! Probably not even it. The worst I could say is that it was really sunny. But again: that sun is nothing comparing to DC. So while other competitors were doing weird stuff to keep themselves cool, I was thinking that there is a lovely breeze and avoiding being sprayed with water (I didn’t want to have wet running shoes).
By the time I was half way done, I really did think of just walking the rest of the way. I actually got in my mind that maybe I could finish under 7 hours (my original plan was to just finish). I yelled at my family to figure out how much time I have left to make it happen. At 5km to go, I got my answer: I had over an hour left to do that. This actually gave me a new goal and boost of speed – I can do 5km in under half an hour, which meant that there was an off chance of me finishing under 6:30. I did my best on the run. I gave it all. I tried to speed up on the mat and that’s why I know I gave it all: I wasn’t able to pick up the pace a single bit. But I knew I made it to the finish line, so I was thrilled:
And then, I found out I finished in 6:29:47:
No, jumping up for joy was not an option… But I was thrilled! I barely made it under the 6:30 line, but I did! I didn’t even dare to dream of that before I started! This was the payoff for a year of really hard work and I made it!
Here are my actual times (some parts are cut off):
I ended up placing 1663, which is great! I ended up placing 46 out 57 in my age group. I was actually 18th on the swim! Turns out I really underestimated my swimming prowess!
Next post will be on lessons I have learned during this race. There were a lot of them…
Now it’s time to look for a new challenge… I’m thinking a full Ironman race… The other 45 marathons… Maybe open water racing… I am pretty sure it will be all of them and the main question is how long will it take for me to get around to all of it 😉