Survived my first experience in a triathlon. Whoo hoo!

First of all, whose bright f*&^%$* idea is it to have a triathlon that starts early in the morning? I know they wanted to get it over with before it got too hot outside, but seriously. "Body marking" (which is where they write your race number, age group, relay info, next of kin, etc. on you in many conspicuous places with a permanent marker that really WON'T come off--I've been scrubbing since yesterday) started at 6 a.m. But the race takes place north of Memphis, so my brother-in-law and I had to leave the house at 5 to get there. Add in needing to load his bike, my sister-in-law's bike, and their friend's bike into the truck and walk the dog, and I had to get up at 4:30. Not the time of day I really feel like being particularly athletic.

Then there was a lot of milling around, getting everyone's stuff organized just so. The way a triathlon works, the people swim first, then come into what they call the "transition area". Everyone has a space in a bike rack, and they all lay their biking and running gear out for a quick change. So they run into the transition area, change as fast as possible into biking gear, and run down to the end of the transition area to get on their bikes and ride. After the ride, they hop off the bikes, find their racks again, rack their bikes, change quickly if needed into running apparel, and run off. Sounds easy. Until you realize that there are 1700 competitors in the triathlon. Who knew there were that many stupid people in the area? Heck, they weren't ever FROM the area. People travel from all over to do this tri. There were people from Alaska, for crying out loud. The upshot of all this is, there were buttloads of people everywhere, all trying to organize their stuff. I didn't have to worry too much about it, since I was the first leg of the relay. As long as I knew where our rack was, I was fine. All I had to do after the swim was run in, take off the microchip strapped to my leg (made me feel like I was in home detention, or something) and strap it to my sister-in-law. Then I was free and clear for the rest of the race to just watch.

Anyway, after a meeting of relay competitors, they started lining us up to race. The pros (yes, there are people stupidly talented enough to make some money off of this torture) went first, spaced every ten seconds. It is a time trial, so even if you pass people and finish first, someone else behind you may have gone faster than you. Then they had the relay swimmers wade into the water. It wasn't cold enough to warrant a wetsuit, although many people wore them (76 isn't bad; I've been in colder pools before, and many colder rivers), but it was chilly at 7:45 in the morning as we stood there and waited for the start. They call it a "wave" start, ostensibly because we all start at the same time. But I like to think of it as more of a "survival of the fittest" start. People were elbowing, swimming over top of other people, cutting people off, all kinds of craziness. Luckily I had my water polo instincts kick in. When I felt someone's fingers around my ankles, I kicked harder. When someone moved up next to me, I flared my stroke wider so they couldn't get too close to me. Lots of fun. After the first leg of the swim (we swam in a weird triangle shape in this big lake) everyone settled into their rhythm and there wasn't much jockeying for position. Except for the idiot who kept trying to pass me. He'd run me over and then swim breaststroke in front of me so he could make sure he was still swimming in a straight line. Then I'd run him over, but he was a little faster than me so eventually we'd do the whole thing again. He finished right in front of me, so he never gained any real ground on me. It probably would have been easier for both of us if he'd have stayed right behind until we got to the end, and then passed me at the finish. Dork.

The worst part of the whole thing was having to run (we've already established how I feel about running) from the water's edge about 50 yards to where my sister-in-law's bike was racked. I'm red-faced, with goggle marks around my eyes, I'm covered with algae (the water was pretty gross and slimy, and I spent a lot of time rinsing out my swimsuit later in the day), and I'm having to jog my jiggly, flabby self in a swimsuit past a bunch of screaming spectators, teammates, and volunteers, and A PHOTOGRAPHER. I swear to God, if he took my picture, I'll kill him and his family. The nightmare as a teenager where I showed up to school naked was not nearly as horrible as this.

There were some amenities. Lots of food for competitors, free beer, a cool t-shirt, a swag bag, stuff like that. And I'm amazed at how many people where there whom I knew. Kids from swim team, coaches of other teams, teachers I work with, all kinds of folks. I just hope they don't expect to see me every year.

Although, next May, if I lose all the weight I'm trying to lose, I'm buying a two-piece racing suit and jogging past that f*&^%$# photographer again...

I'm nervous. Way back, several months ago, my sister-in-law asked me to do her a favor. She and her husband have been into doing these 5K runs and things like that for awhile now. Recently they've gotten into triathlons. Not sure why; maybe it's because they are both in their 30's now with two kids and are concerned about staying in shape. Maybe it's because my nineteen-year-old brother-in-law now lives near them, and he's pretty athletic, and this gives all of them something to do together. Maybe they like punishing themselves. Anyway, they've been training and doing little triathlons here and there in the St. Louis area, and they decided it would be fun to come down and visit and participate in the annual tri for the Memphis in May celebration. But my brother-in-law wanted to do the whole thing himself, and my sister-in-law and her husband wanted to do a relay team. Which meant they needed to talk either me or my husband into participating. I am the soft sell of the two of us, and I caved and said I'd do the swim. (*Note: I don't run. Ever. Even in sports when there is a ball involved, I merely jog. It isn't even a jog; my friend calls it a "wog"--half walk, half jog. People tell me if I were chased by a bear I'd run. Not true. If I were chased by a bear, I'd go fetal and hope it thought I was dead. No sense in running as fast as I can for as long as I can and then get mauled anyway.*) So I've worked on my swimming for the past few months. Not hard-core or anything, but since I've been working out to lose weight it's been easy to work swimming into the routine. I'm not particularly fast. Never was. But I shouldn't be the slowest person out there, either. Typically the swimming leg of the tri is the weak leg for most people. Don't know why they don't spend time working on it, but many triathletes spend the majority of their time working on the run and the bike. Anyway, I've haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it, since so far in the future and I've had so much else going on. But now, it's finally here. The whole family is in town to watch us make fools of ourselves. And the tri is tomorrow morning. And now that I'm thinking about it, I'm nervous. My sister-in-law keeps telling me I shouldn't worry about it and that we're just doing it for fun, but I can't help but think that she and her husband will be a little disappointed in me if I have a poor showing. I hate having the pressure of being on a relay because other people are relying on me to perform well. So I'm nervous. And the dumb thing is tomorrow, so now I'm faced with having to compete in a sporting event for the first time since my senior year of college. That was ten years ago, now that I think about it. Eek. So I'll let you know how it goes...

Whoo hoo! New trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean 2.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest

July 7!!!

Not much happens to me on a regular basis, which makes the whole blogging thing kind of moot. Haven't managed to lose any more weight, although we're starting to get back into a routine as far as working out goes. Oh well. My summer will be chock full (I hope) of weight loss stories.

I am a little depressed, though. The seniors at the school where I teach are, for the most part, done. Their last day of classes was yesterday (they get out three and a half weeks ahead of the rest of the students--when I was in high school, we got out in June, not May, and the seniors got done three DAYS earlier than everyone else. Big whoop). Since their lockers were all in the hallway outside my classroom, it's been oddly quiet all day long, which makes me a little sad. I'm used to hearing their ruckus ("Could you describe the ruckus, sir?") in the hallway, and the silence is weird.

Plus, I'm very fond of this particular class. They were my original freshman class when I started teaching at this school, so we've sort of grown up together. About a month into school that first year, I attended a new teacher orientation conference. One of the speakers talked about the movie Hook with Robin Williams. Primarily, she discussed the character who spends the whole movie looking for his marbles. Everyone in the movie thinks the guy is nuts, but he's really looking for a bag of marbles which were his happy thoughts. You can't go to Neverland without pixie dust and a helping of happy thoughts, so he'd been stuck in the real world that whole time, looking for his marbles. The point was, as teachers, we needed to decide what we taught for, our happy thoughts about being teachers, and always think of those "marbles". Well, I thought about it, and my students ARE my happy thoughts. They are the reason I teach. So, when I came back from the conference, I told the girls about the marbles. I explained that they were my marbles, and the nickname just sort of stuck. It became a running joke. Before every extended weekend or holiday, I'd tell them to be careful and make sure to come back, because I "didn't want to lose my marbles". At the end of the year, I gave each student (98!) a handwritten note and a bag of three marbles, which stood for Faith, Hope, and Love. I told them not to lose their marbles. One of the girls gave me a huge jar with 98 marbles, inscribed with the initials of the members of the class (one per marble), so I could always remember "my marbles". (I keep those on my desk to this day, and the girls have asked to have the jar placed on the table at the front of baccalaureate to represent their memories of their freshman year.)

Anyway, I've always referred to their class specifically as "marbles". They all know where the marbles are that I gave them (although I suspect they've lost some other figurative ones along the way!), and I've even given marbles to the members of the class who arrived after freshman year. I've sort of adopted them all. As for me, I carry two marbles with me in my purse everywhere that I go, as a representation of the two members of the class who tragically passed away (one the summer between their sophomore and junior years and the other in January of their junior year); I may have "lost" those marbles but they will always be with me.

At their senior day assembly yesterday (where we give out the academic and service awards to the seniors and heap love and attention on them), they made their dedications for the yearbook and the literary magazine. The yearbook was dedicated to a teacher who is retiring after 31 years, and (as I totally tuned out the presentation to plan what I was going to say when I got up in a moment to give my newspaper editors their flowers for their hard work all year) I realized everyone was staring at me and that they had said my name, because they had dedicated the literary magazine. To me. I managed to not cry (although I cried a bit in the car on the way home) but I'm sure I'll bawl at graduation. I sit right in the front row, according how they line the teachers up every year, and I've already warned the girls not to look down at me (especially the ones who have to sing).

And now they're gone. My seniors, my marbles, are not in the hallway today. They have not come in to use my printer to print some last-minute assignment. They have not come in checking to see if I have any snacks stashed away in my desk. They have not come in to oogle the posters of Orlando Bloom, Heath Ledger, and Viggo Mortensen on my wall (because they've taken them: I promised them they could have the posters when they graduated, and darn them for taking me up on that!). They are not bringing me presents, or stopping in to say hi, or asking for help on their research papers. Because they are moving on. They are going out in the bright big world to do all the things that I know they can do. They are going on to do great things, fabulous things, earth-shaking things.

And I will just sit here, with my jar of marbles, and miss them so.