Scary Scary Onionman (1.5k swim, 40k bike, 10k run)

I am back from my first triathlon of the year and a 2+ month blogging hiatus. I haven't stopped, I just spend a huge amount of time on the activity, so I just don't feel like writing about it.

Here are my stats from Onionman:
Total Time Swim Transition Bike Transition Run
3:05:10 0:41:19 4:01 1:24:01 1:34 0:54:15

These are not what I hoped, but I do have a story.

For some mysterious reason I completely freaked as soon as the race began. In the two events I did last year I expected to be a bit bothered by the pummelling madness of hundreds crashing into the water and swimming at once, but I wasn't. For some reason yesterday the same activity turned my into an irrational hyperventilating mess. I did have a new wetsuit and I did have a bit of weirdness around diabetes care (I forgot a lancet so I had to use an old safety pin out of Emily's shoe to poke) but I have always broken the 'nothing new on race day' rule. This was just an out of the blue loss of clear thinking. Actually it was more visceral than a problem of thinking. My brain was telling me that my reaction was stupid and there was obviously nothing to be terrified about, but everything in my respiratory system begged to differ. I would try to stick my head in and swim, but I could barely swim a stroke and my head would come out of the water with a wheezing inhalation. Of course, as this was happening I was being run into by what felt like thousands of angry dolphins. I just looked at the pictures and was amazed at how uncrowded it really was. This pattern of stop, start, attempt to swim, gain a few yards via doggy paddle went on for about the first 400 yards of the 1500 yard swim. By that point I didn't have to be concerned with the army of pummeling swimmers, because there were so few around my anymore. Finally, at some mysterious point, I was able to actually swim. Luckily, I didn't think too much about the people in row boats along the route who would have rescued me instantly if I have signalled. I'm not sure if it was pride or fear or perseverance, but one of those kept me in self propulsion. It may have been light years from ideal, but it always remained self propulsion.
I never quite felt right the rest of the event. Through both the bike and the run I had a bit of a squeezed chest sensation. I never quite stopped gasping for breath until I crossed the finish line. But I did cross the finish line. This is what training does. Mentally I fell apart, but training kept my on autopilot enough that my emotional malfunction was not enough to derail.
The best I felt was at the end. I have to thank Barb Fox, who beat me last year, for making (yes making) me sprint to catch her the last 1/2 mile. Finally at that point I went from fixating on how much I thought the experience sucked to how much I love doing this.
Here is what makes my happy. I completely lost reason and the apparent ability to do something that I have been completely unable to do the vast majority of my life and did not stop. I was able to recover and finish. It did not look how I wanted and it was not my exact desired outcome, but I did not stop.

Here are my times again.

Total Time Swim Transition Bike Transition Run
3:05:10 0:41:19 4:01 1:24:01 1:34 0:54:15

Here are my times at the exact same race last year.

Total Time Swim Transition Bike Transition Run
3:16:20 0:40:19 6:15 1:29:35 2:05 0:58:05

I presented myself with a catastrophically shitty start and I progressed. This is love.