This past weekend, we had our final open water swim (test) before the Nautica New York City Triathlon. We'll be swimming a mile in the Hudson River, so our coaches thought it would be important to get some more open water experience (think waves, murky waters, jellyfish, slime, etc) before the big day. After our 1 hour in the ocean of Coney Island beach, we transitioned into running mode, washed our selves off, stripped down out of our wetsuits, and donned our sneakers.We got onto the boardwalk with about 3 miles laid out in front of us to run. On boardwalk.
For those of you that are familiar with boardwalks, let's just say they are not the most even. They are also not known for being all that well-maintained, and Coney Island, I feel, can boast being on top of a glorified list of boardwalks with excessive nails sticking out. I don't know if it was that I still had my sea-legs, whether I was distracted by catching up to a coworker on the run, or the fact that my hair-tie was quickly slipping off and my curly hair was threatening to let loose... all I can say is that I wiped-out, and I wiped out hard. Also, being that it was a sunny day, and I've been feeling a little more confident about my triathlete body, I had opted to go in my sports bra (smart one, sarah). So, my sneaker caught a nail and as I tried to catch myself, my other shoe caught a bent nail as well. I sprawled, stomach, elbow, wrists all out, flat between two male coworkers, and my water bottle went flying down the boardwalk about 25 feet.
Embarrassing. I literally had a swarm of 8 (all male, all Team In Training members) pulling me up off the ground, asking me if I was okay. There go any chances of picking up some nice triathletes... I felt so uncool and uncoordinated, but only for a second. As an athlete, I had to put myself in the right mindset and just keep going.
I discovered though that the boardwalk splinters had torn up the top of my tri shorts, and I had splinter throughout my top, and had about 10 splinters on the left side of my body. I was able to remove all but 2, and tried to perform a poorly executed extraction on myself, only leaving some excessive scars (and the 2 splinters). Sigh. I'm missing a little chunk from my hand, a little of my dignity and have a pretty bad splinter still in my side. Somehow, these splinter made me think of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and calling myself Master Splinter made me feel ever so slightly better.
Trying to build up the excitement for the triathlon! Less than a week!
-Master Splinter signing out
PS - Here's a nice little compare & contrast to illustrate how my coolness points have gone since upgrading my lifestyle (and subsequently my wardrobe) to that of a triathlete!
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