I had a nice warm-up, The Great Magnetic Wife was waiting for me with my Crocs (or as she calls them, my goofy shoes) for the run back to transition. What could go wrong. While my wave was waiting to start, the first couple of swimmers from the first wave got out of the water. About twenty minutes for a 1500 meter swim. Man, that's good.
We started and everything was going okay. I was swimming at the back of the pack, but that's okay. About half way into the swim I started getting passed by a few folks from the wave that followed. Not a problem. About three quarters of the way through the swim I got slapped on the foot by a swimmer. Not a problem. He then slapped me on my butt. I was thinking, "dude, you hit me once, go around." Then he hit me on the side of my head and dislodge my goggles. The second triathlon in a row this has happened. The time before, however, it was totally random. This guy hit me twice before, he was essentially climbing over me. What a jerk. Getting my goggles, dislodged, although unpleasant, was not the big problem. The big problem was that as he slapped the side of my head, I got a major cramp in calf of my left leg. As odd as it seems they seemed to be related. I must have tensed up when I got slapped in the head and suddenly I was in a lot of pain.
It is very difficult to stretch out a cramp in the water. I got out of the way of the on-coming swimmers and did my best. The lifeguard came over and told me to hop on the stretcher on the back of his jet-ski. But I told him, I was going to try to stretch out the cramp. It took a few minutes. I attempted to swim again, but I almost immediately cramped again. I took another few minutes, but this time I was able to keep going. I could feel a slight knot in my calf for the rest of the swim and into the bike. This was going to be my second really lousy swim in a row. I used to think that swimming was my best event in triathlon, but that has certainly not been the case this season.
The Great Magnetic wife was waiting for me with my goofy shoes and I put them on as soon and we got to the pavement. Before we got to the pavement their was a run on the sand, that was tiring.
My swim time, which included the long run back to transition was 45:50. Last year at the Camp Pendleton Triathlon was 37:12. So I imagine that my cramp cost me about seven minutes.
Back at transition, all of the bikes in my age group had left, just like The Breath Of Life Triathlon. I was the last one out of the water in my age group again. D'oh!
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