Triathlon: The Night Before

By kate on September 11th, 1999

It is ten p.m. the night before the triathlon and I really don’t feel nervous or excited. I’ve been too wrapped up in the details to really think about the race.

I’ve been sick all week – so sick that I went home early from work every day. I was very worried that I’d be sick on race day. Fortunately, I’m mostly better (but I would have raced no matter what). All week I poured vitamin C, zinc, and echinacea into my body, drank lots of fluids, got lots of sleep, and did everything I could think of to get well. One of those things was to rest – that is, I haven’t worked out since I got back from my trip. I know I’m in good enough shape, but I still wish I could have trained a little more this week. My tapering turned out to be a sharp drop-off instead.

In any case, it worked and I feel almost well. Tonight I’ve been engrossed in the minutiae of preparing my gear. I checked into the race this afternoon and found out I was number 50 – in the first wave. They wrote “50” on both my hands in permanent marker, and gave me numbers to put on my swimsuit, shirt, and bike.

I’ve been thinking about things such as, do I put my sports bra under my swimsuit (before the swim) or on top of my swimsuit (after the swim)? Which running shorts should I wear? Should I bring a hat? What flavor of PowerBar shall I have in the morning? How do I attach that darn number to my bike? Should I wear a ponytail or pigtails?

Another immediate concern of mine is a headache that I’ve developed. Occasionally I get a headache that lasts for three or four days, that nothing can help, even Tylenol. This headache feels like one of those. I just hope it’s gone in the morning.

So, as of right now, I haven’t devoted any thought or imagination to what tomorrow will be like. It still seems far away.