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Pique n' Your Interest

Summer glories

A message left on my phone at work this week brought home a cold reality – summer is almost over.

The message concerned a certain "back to school" event and it sent a shudder down my spine. Is it that time of year already?

It’s not as though my life is going to change drastically after the long weekend when school kids everywhere are roused out of their beds and dragged off to school.

I won’t be getting brand new binders or new pens or shoes. I won’t be worrying about who’s sitting next to me in class, and whether I’m getting the meanest teacher in school.

And I certainly won’t be worrying about new school uniforms. I was unlucky enough to have a mom, fresh off the boat from Scotland, who insisted I wear the school uniform (ugly mustard yellow turtle neck with black, white and yellow plaid kilt) even though the uniform wasn’t mandatory and no one else’s parents felt compelled to make their kids wear it. Can you imagine what my class pictures looked like in the early years?

Fortunately I won’t be doing any of the usual back to school preps.

Instead, my life will continue on as normal.

But the years of conditioning from age 5 to 18 have made those three short words "back to school" synonymous with the end of summer. And I’m just not ready for that.

Didn’t it seem like we were just in the thick of summer, of long days and bright sunshine and patio diners, only a few short days ago?

Even the days sitting at my desk, slowly melting as a fan blew hot air around my face and the seemingly innocuous act of typing caused small beads of sweat to form on my forehead, even that has become a distant memory now. I want my summer back.

Perhaps it’s my great achievement this summer that makes me remember the season so fondly. For it was only three weeks ago that I did my first triathlon. I prefer now to write "my first triathlon" without the capital letters to perhaps give people the illusion that I’m some kind of super athlete rather than a newbie who suffered and sweated in the race to the finish line in My First Triathlon. It wasn’t pretty by any stretch of the imagination.

My First Triathlon is an event for first timers with shorter distances i.e. 400 metre swim, 20 kilometre bike, five km run.

Somehow when I don’t capitalize the event and don’t call it My First Triathlon, it’s easier to forget what a gong show it actually was.

I can forget the image of my friend in a baby blue hard helmet, dug up from the depths of our mini-van and attached to his head with a piece of rope after he announced he had forgotten his bike helmet.

We managed to borrow another helmet in the end but this was his only option at one point.

And I can forget the frightening image of me hopping onto my bike after the swim in the transition area, riding it through the rows of other bikes, bobbing and weaving through other frantic swimmers and practically plowing them down in my excitement for making it out of the lake alive.

No one told me that you’re not supposed to jump on your bike in the transition area.

Most of all I can forget my appalling behaviour in the last kilometre of the race.

Nearly dying as the sun beat down on the asphalt and my toes screamed out in agony, I was ready to walk across the finish line and call it day. And then a girl ran up beside me and encouraged me to run it out. I picked up my knees and put my head down. This girl was an inspiration and we ran together with a few words of encouragement squeaked out between our laboured breaths.

And then I saw the finish line and something came over me.

I felt an overwhelming need to beat this girl, to leave her in my dust.

I searched deep down and managed to find the will to push myself through the pain and across the finish line before her.

Not exactly sportsmanlike behaviour when you consider the only reason I was even at the finish line at that time was because of her.

What can I say? Maybe I was trying to raise the drama a little for the spectators and give them a photo finish to talk about, although come to think of it I don’t know if they actually take photo finishes of 139 and 140 crossing the finish line.

Who cares? The point is I beat her and as 139th at the finish line I’ll take my small victories wherever I can find them.

And so you see, by saying I did "my first triathlon" rather than My First Triathlon, I can somehow lay all those memories to rest and make believe, if just for a moment, that I’m a triathlete.

With the event finally past me, and believe me in the weeks leading up to it there was a dark cloud hanging over my head as my training fell by the wayside, a huge weight had lifted off my shoulders.

Somewhat proud of my time, and believing that I wasn’t a total incompetent at sports, which by the way is a feeling I’ve never had before until I moved to Whistler and started hanging out with Ironmen, my first triathlon gave me a new lease on life.

The confidence carried over onto my mountain bike and by the end of the summer I was doing rock faces that I’ve never done before because in my mind I had done my first triathlon rather than My First Triathlon.

But let’s not get carried away.

I don’t want people in Whistler to read this and start going on about how great the Squamish triathlon is and maybe I should consider signing up for it next. Let me rest, for crying out loud.

For the time being I’d just like to savour the memory of crossing over that finish line when I could officially and finally say that I had done my first triathlon.