Maria Conquers Music City Swim

The Music City Triathlon Swim was chaos. Strong wind, big waves, and eventually the swim buoys blew away. Here is Maria M's (above: front row, rt.) report from the swim:

"When the race started, my body was in the water, but my head was not in it. It took me what felt like a ridiculously long time just to swim about 200 yards. The waves were huge, I could not see out of my goggles, and I could not take a breath without drinking lake water. There was absolutely no part of me that felt like swimming in those conditions, especially because I knew that by the time I finished the swim leg, the rest of the collegiate wave would be so far ahead of me that I would not have a chance of catching up on the bike or the run.

"So I turned back to shore and figured I would either DNF the race or see if the race officials would still let me compete with the group of people who elected before the race to forego the swim leg and just do the bike and the run. I was leaning towards taking the DNF mainly because I just did not feel like riding and running through insane conditions. What I really wanted to do was go home and feel sorry for myself because I had a bad week.

"But before I got all the way back to shore, I ran into Steve, who was in the process of warming up before the start of his wave. He asked me why I turned back, and I gave him all of my reasons, minus the one about how I just did not feel like racing that day. As I stood there talking to him, I could pretty much hear myself whining, and I hate being a whiner. I especially hate being a whiner in front of Steve since he knows me well enough to know that I am not wuss.

"Steve then proceeded to give me an STtrainer pep talk, which basically consisted of him finding a nice, supportive way of telling me that what I really needed to do was calm down, suck it up, and go try it again. So I went back out there and swam the whole course despite the fact that the lifeguards told me right before I reached the first (non-existent) turn buoy that the swim had been cancelled. It may not have counted for anything, but once I went back out there in the water there was no way I was coming back to shore without swimming the whole course.

"My primary reason for finishing was that I really needed to know that I could do it, but I must admit that there was also a very large part of me that did not want to have to tell Steve that I cut it short twice (even if the second time I technically had a USAT-approved reason for coming back to shore). To be honest, the second time I went out there, I didn't think the conditions were all that bad. I drank a lot of water and it took me awhile to finish, but who cares?

Maria is currently training for the Half-Iron distance at Great Floridian.