Sometime during Hour 4 of our epic 7-hour, 32-minute, 15-second Soma Half-Ironman on Sunday, my Mom asked me: “What’s the hardest of the three events in this race?”

From the shady confines of the Team Athena Riding Clydesdales Party Pavilion™, I took a long draw on my cold beer and gazed out upon the shimmering brown waters of Tempe Town Lake. I pondered my sweet husband Patrick, aka Clydesdale #1, riding his bicycle over 56 wind-whipped miles. I considered the coming suffering of Clydesdale #2, Jason Robert, running his 13.1-mile half-marathon under a blazing noonday sun. I breathed a sweet sigh of relief.

“Not the swim. Definitely not the swim. I mean, maybe if I was in the Arctic Ocean, during a tsunami, with sharks to the left of me and sea lions to the right, only then could the swim possibly be the hardest event – but on a day like today?” I clicked to the tracking app on the iPad to follow Pat’s progress – the breeze that cooled us in the Party Pavilion simultaneously punished him on Rio Salado Parkway. “On a day like today, I’m glad to be the swimmer.”

 

And this little swimmer swam her heart out – a personal-best time over the 1.2-mile distance in 48:43. That’s 4:03 faster than my last Half-Ironman relay six months ago. In fact, this vast improvement in my 2,000-meter swim vastly improved our place in the overall standings: Team Athena Riding Clydesdales finished 70th of 73 relay teams.

If I had posted my previous 52:46 swim, we would have finished next-to-last – or penultimate, as my friend Laurie likes to say.

But you will find no boasting from me – because, let’s be frank, here: I am no Haley Anderson… or Diana Nyad... or even Diana Nyad’s third cousin, twice removed. In the universe of triathlon, I do just one thing better than any of my weekend-warrior friends: I jump in Tempe Town Lake and swim around it without compunction (OK, maybe just a little compunction – and compunction is a lot different than competition). Apparently, this one thing is such a game-changer that superior runners and cyclists will gladly settle for being in the top 95 percent of all finishers in exchange for having me on their triathlon team.

So I gamely did what every other relay swimmer did yesterday: I plunged in the water, peed in my wetsuit, threw some elbows during the start, got a nice groove going in the first 500 meters, zigged left, zagged right, felt the churn from the wave of fast ladies overtaking me as they closed the two-minute gap between our starting times, almost crashed into the turn buoy, headed back for home, zigged more right, zagged back left, avoided crashing into the lane-marker buoy, overtook a dude that had started two minutes in front of me, turned for the finish line, staggered up the steps, stumbled toward the transition, wobbled around while Jason pulled the timing chip from my left ankle and slapped it on Pat, kissed Pat good-bye and then wandered over to the Party Pavilion™.

It was 7:40 AM.

I adjourned to one of the nicer flush-toilet accommodations to apply my Nathan Sports Power Shower wipes to cleanse myself of lake contamination, change into dry clothes, comb my hair, affix my sun visor and settle down for a long afternoon of waiting with my parents, my non-racing Clydesdale (either Jason or Pat, depending on the time of day) and my 72 fellow relay swimmers.

At 8:23 AM, just as Daddy and I were deciding which would be the best path to take to the neighborhood coffee bar for breakfast, Pat called me.

“Are you OK?”

“My tire blew.”

“Don’t you have extra tubes?”

“Not the tube – the tire, the new tire that I bought on Friday and just put on.”

The fancy new tire that replaced the old, reliable tire that was bald in some places with the threads showing through. Shit.

Team Athena Riding Clydesdales jumped into action: Jason sent me to the Landis Cyclery tech van. We located Pat on the iPad, and the wrenches at Landis directed us to the nearest on-course tech tent. I called Pat back at 8:26 AM.

“Go west about a half-mile on Rio Salado. We’ll meet you at the tech tent – they’re right across from the parking garage and before you get to Mill. I’ll bring my credit card so we can buy you a new tire.”

Mom, Dad and I hoofed it to the tech tent, arriving just as Pat pushed his hobbled Cannondale under the canopy.* The wrenches hoisted it onto the stand. I fumbled through my wallet for payment. They handed me the blown tire – yeah, it split right along the bead – I hung it around my neck so we could return it for a refund. Pat wiped the sweat off his sunglasses – and just like that, they were done. Wha?

“Off you go!”

New tube. New tire. Seven minutes flat. They would not accept payment. Landis Cyclery (no relation to Floyd) is now the official bike repair shop for Team Athena Riding Clydesdales. Independently owned, they have been serving Valley cyclists for 100 years. Seriously, super nice guys. Please support them because they support us!

And where were we? Oh yeah – why the swimming leg is the easiest part of the triathlon relay.

Mom, Dad and I decided to continue onward to the neighborhood cafe, which not only had warm muffins and hot coffee but also Bloody Marys. We crowded around a counter clogged with other incredibly fit-looking people, tucking into luscious omelets and sipping refreshing mimosas. Coincidentally, they too had R’s written in black magic marker on their right calves. I exchanged thumbs-up with my fellow relay swimmers.

When they asked about the tire that I was wearing as a pageant sash, I explained the sad story of Clydesdale 1 and lauded the efforts of Landis Cyclery accordingly – and then we all said a silent prayer of thanks that we were not flailing around on balky bicycles or warming up to run on hot pavement like those other poor bastards: our teammates.

At 9:48 AM, we made our way back to the Team Athena Riding Clydesdales Party Pavilion™. At 10 AM, I cracked open my first beer, carefully poured it into a plastic cup, checked our Clydesdale 1-tracking device, grabbed my trusty cowbell and walked purposefully over to a nearby corner to cheer him on as he churned up the hill.

“Go Pat Go!” I shouted. “You can do it! Two more laps! We have cold beer waiting for you!”

I managed to ring the cowbell vigorously and continuously without spilling my cold beer: It’s hard being a relay swimmer.

After blowing a tire, jogging with his bike in his bike shoes to the tech tent, replacing said tire and inner tube, throwing a chain, repositioning said chain, and trying to make up for all the delays that these delays caused, Clydesdale 1 did not have a fun day on the bike course, finishing in 3:40:22 for a 15.25 mph average – which is unfortunate, because he’d been averaging 17 mph on the first of his three 18-mile laps… before the dreaded tire incident, the surge of adrenaline and the subsequent bonk on Lap 3.

“I will say this much, I killed them on the turns,” Pat recalled during his debriefing in the Party Pavilion™. “Those pros are fast, and they have their carbon-fiber bikes and fancy wheels, but I killed them on the corners… I was going inside, way outside, showing them a wheel, and they were like, Whoa! And then we’d come out of a turn, and they’d pass me like I was standing still.”

You will recall that Clydesdale 1 was a bad-ass motorcycle racer prior to entering the triathlon universe. If he could glue plastic pucks to his knees to take the turns more aggressively, he would. As it stood, Clydesdale 1 earned the respect of all the skinny triathletes on each of the 25 turns on the course (seriously, the course was shaped like a hand – with fingers – and they had to loop it three times, which meant he got to demonstrate his mad turning skills 75 times)… but then they clobbered him in the overall standings. He finished 69th of 73 riders – 94th percentile (I finished 60th of 73 swimmers – 82nd percentile – so he blew my lead).

Unfortunately, these delays meant that Clydesdale 2 was mounting the course at roughly 11:30 in the afternoon… in Arizona… in the late summer (and yes, mid-October is late summer for us). Ever the gamer, Jason had arrived at the race at the crack of dawn, even though he could have stayed in bed another two or three hours – and he probably should have. Jason will be running the New York City Marathon on November 4 to benefit Chances for Children (support him!) and the Soma Half-Ironman was to be his final long training run before that race… except that he woke up with a head cold.

As Jason was circumnavigating two sweltering laps around Tempe Town Lake, I was wrapping up my recovery from my swim in said lake and transitioning to training hard for the next day’s hangover – but that would not detract me from my remaining relay swimmer responsibilities! Because Jason does not have an iPhone, we could not employ the Clydesdale tracking device during his run (Find My Friends or Find My iPhone apps), so it was up to me to scan the heat waves with my binoculars, spot the correct blue speck running in the distance, ring the mighty cowbell and cheer him on to victory (all without spilling my beer).

And I had to do this outside of the protective, shady confines of the Team Athena Riding Clydesdales Party Pavilion. I had to reapply my sunscreen! I also had to deploy my persuasive powers on my husband to encourage him to extricate himself from the Party Pavilion and join Jason as we crossed the finish line in triumph together!

“No way in hell am I gonna run after I just rode 56 miles on my bike!”

“C’mon, Pat, I just swam for 48 minutes – you can run for a quarter-mile.”

He rolled his eyes. No one respects the contributions of the relay swimmer – but he does respect the urgings of his Mother-in-Law. On fresh legs, I jogged out to meet Jason, who was flagging but still chipper.

“Let’s finish strong!” he said, as we began galloping toward the finish. Pat joined up with us about 200 meters from the gate and as we three joined hands triumphantly and crossed the line together – much to the delight of the race announcer, who couldn’t pronounce my name, but did say, “One of the most creative team names I’ve heard – Team Athena Riding Clydesdales! Let’s give it up for Team Athena Riding Clydesdales!”

Notice that he did not say “one of the most appropriate team names.”

Our workday completed, Team Athena Riding Clydesdales gathered our medals – which also double as beer-bottle openers (SCORE!) – and we decided to retreat to the air-conditioned comfort of the great indoors. The Soma Half-Ironman had thrown its worst at us – and we had defeated it (well, we had not been defeated by it – we managed to finish third-from-last). It was time to take these Clydesdales back to the barn, and for mighty Athena to take a shower and maybe a nap.

We’d earned it – well, at least, they had earned – I am, after all, the swimmer.

 

*Because he arrived at the tech tent under his own power and no one helped advance him along the course, Clydesdale was able to accept tech assistance from the officially sanctioned wrenches. He checked with a course marshal on this one. Good to know for future races… and there will be a future race because Pat wants a do-over.