Mergozzo Half Ironman - Part III

After record highs in the 100's throughout Europe all summer long, in september it started to rain. It rained so hard it started to flood parts northern Italy with weather alerts and mudslide warnings. Whenever I had daydreamed about my race, rain had never been part of it. I sort of saw it as a farewell to summer celebration, except good weather was part of the day. When they started to predict thunderstorms I started to panic. The saturday before the race going up to Mergozzo, Linda (my traveling companion) and I stopped off at the Bike show in Milan. Besides checking out all the bikes I'll never be able to buy, I did manage to purchase some arm gloves and those booties for my bike shoes. Just in case. I mean saturday was sweltering hot and even in Mergozzo while I was standing in line to pick up my packet it must have been about 80 degrees.
But that night while I was in bed I heard a *CRASH* and recognized it as lightening and then *RUMBLE* came the thunder. It was 5:00 a.m. My friend Giorgio was coming the next day to watch the race and since he was still at home I texted him to bring some trash bags so that I could put my transition stuff in them. He answered me within a minute and then I fell back to sleep for another hour.
I woke up and it was pouring rain. It wasn't really cold but very very wet. When I got down to the transition area NOBODY had set their bike up. Everybody was just sort of huddling under the buildings and waiting until the last minute so that their stuff wouldn't get too wet. At 15 minutes before the men's start I decided to set up my transition and put on my wetsuit. Oops! Haven't tried that on in four years! With a little wiggling around I was able to slip it on, whew! It was still pouring. I separated my running and bike stuff into two different plastic bags, placed my helmet on my bike and hoped that I had remembered to do everything right. I watched the men's start. They had to be called back like ten times and delayed the start by almost ten minutes. After they took off I got in the water to check it out. It was actually warm compared to the outside temperature, plus I forgot how much bouyancy a wetsuit gives you. I just sort of floated in the water for a few minutes and then got ready to start. I positioned myself in the back and just waited for them to give the women's start.

Mergozzo Half Ironman - Part II

My training had its ups and downs all summer. I'm sure that it wasn't "conventional" triathlon training, at least nothing like what I've seen on this list. In June and July I tried to get to the pool a couple times a week and swim at least 2km. I have a chlorine allergy problem and they really load the pools up with it during the summer over here which is why I could never stay in for more than an hour. I went out on the bike as much as I could, which was probably not often enough. My running...well, it just was. I've been having back problems this year which extend to my left leg and hips. Sometimes it's not pretty to watch. My husband had me doing posture exercises while I ran and I was finally able to see my favourite osteopath in August who thinks part of the problem is in the lung region. I had x-rays done the other day that will be ready in a few days...(UPDATE: x-rays came back and I have a really bad scoliosi which curves right where the lungs are) .I needed to keep my running to a minimum so as not to aggravate the problem.
For the month of August we went down to our summer house in Apulia on the Ionian Sea. http://tinyurl.com/eteqs Since I couldn't bring my road bike with me I bought a really cheap mountain bike (usd 130!!) but it was so uncomfortable after a few hours that I never stayed on it for more than that. What I did do was a lot of uphill intervals. Once a week I picked this hill that was about two km straight up and I just road it up and down until I dropped (an hour and a half - I have no resistance). My thighs would quiver when I got off the bike, but the next day I was fine so I knew that I just needed to keep it up. It really worked because when I got back home to Modena in September it was like I had little jets on my legs, riding about 5kph faster than before. My tapering was, hmmm, long. I went on a five day trip to London with my daughter. We had a hotel room next to Kensington Gardens so I went running every morning, but... that was counterbalanced by a visit to Starbucks twice a day and many delicious English Carbohydrates.
The week before the race I went to the pool once and then road my bike for a 45km jaunt...and I started to have my doubts on whether I would actually finish this race or not.

My main problem was this: I knew I would be last. People always talk about what a wonderful country Italy is with the Italians so laid back. Yeah, they have siestas and two hour lunches and one month vacations, but when it comes to sports, they are very very competitive. It's not entirely their fault, they're bred that way. In school when they play sports they're encouraged to participate only in sports that they excel in . No, you're not supposed to run because you enjoy it, you run if you're fast and can be competitive at it. Otherwise it's considered a waste of time. They carry this mentality with them into adulthood and that's where you'll find your competitive "amateurs" . This mentality has laxed a little on the running scene, but not yet with the triathletes. My age group, 45-49 women? There are four of us. Four. In the entire country.
The second problem was this: even though there was no drafting allowed in this race, from the look at the previous year's results everybody was drafting. I knew this because I had already competed against some of the women in Olympic triathlons and they had ALWAYS come in behind me. Knowing that I absolutely would-not-draft I was pretty sure I would be last. The time limits were 1.5 hours for the swim, 6 hours for the swim/bike and 8 for the whole race. My main goal was to finish within the eight hour time limit.

Mergozzo Half Ironman - Part II

My training had its ups and downs all summer. I'm sure that it wasn't "conventional" triathlon training, at least nothing like what I've seen on this list. In June and July I tried to get to the pool a couple times a week and swim at least 2km. I have a chlorine allergy problem and they really load the pools up with it during the summer over here which is why I could never stay in for more than an hour. I went out on the bike as much as I could, which was probably not often enough. My running...well, it just was. I've been having back problems this year which extend to my left leg and hips. Sometimes it's not pretty to watch. My husband had me doing posture exercises while I ran and I was finally able to see my favourite osteopath in August who thinks part of the problem is in the lung region. I had x-rays done the other day that will be ready in a few days...(UPDATE: x-rays came back and I have a really bad scoliosi which curves right where the lungs are) .I needed to keep my running to a minimum so as not to aggravate the problem.
For the month of August we went down to our summer house in Apulia on the Ionian Sea. http://tinyurl.com/eteqs Since I couldn't bring my road bike with me I bought a really cheap mountain bike (usd 130!!) but it was so uncomfortable after a few hours that I never stayed on it for more than that. What I did do was a lot of uphill intervals. Once a week I picked this hill that was about two km straight up and I just road it up and down until I dropped (an hour and a half - I have no resistance). My thighs would quiver when I got off the bike, but the next day I was fine so I knew that I just needed to keep it up. It really worked because when I got back home to Modena in September it was like I had little jets on my legs, riding about 5kph faster than before. My tapering was, hmmm, long. I went on a five day trip to London with my daughter. We had a hotel room next to Kensington Gardens so I went running every morning, but... that was counterbalanced by a visit to Starbucks twice a day and many delicious English Carbohydrates.
The week before the race I went to the pool once and then road my bike for a 45km jaunt...and I started to have my doubts on whether I would actually finish this race or not.

My main problem was this: I knew I would be last. People always talk about what a wonderful country Italy is with the Italians so laid back. Yeah, they have siestas and two hour lunches and one month vacations, but when it comes to sports, they are very very competitive. It's not entirely their fault, they're bred that way. In school when they play sports they're encouraged to participate only in sports that they excel in . No, you're not supposed to run because you enjoy it, you run if you're fast and can be competitive at it. Otherwise it's considered a waste of time. They carry this mentality with them into adulthood and that's where you'll find your competitive "amateurs" . This mentality has laxed a little on the running scene, but not yet with the triathletes. My age group, 45-49 women? There are four of us. Four. In the entire country.
The second problem was this: even though there was no drafting allowed in this race, from the look at the previous year's results everybody was drafting. I knew this because I had already competed against some of the women in Olympic triathlons and they had ALWAYS come in behind me. Knowing that I absolutely would-not-draft I was pretty sure I would be last. The time limits were 1.5 hours for the swim, 6 hours for the swim/bike and 8 for the whole race. My main goal was to finish within the eight hour time limit.

Mergozzo Half Ironman - Part I

The last triathlon I remember participating in was in 2002 near Trieste. There was a Bora blowing (http://tinyurl.com/guhk4) and I nearly drowned during the swim and could barely get any speed going on the bike portion. I guess that was part of the adventure though because at the end of the race I was already making plans with my friend Giorgio to go back the next year. That never happened though because that winter I was pregnant at 42 with my second child. I had Evan the following fall and had a tough time getting back in shape. I did though. I lost the pregnancy weight and I was running again fairly decently after a year. Eighteen months later I ran my first post pregnancy marathon. I really wanted to get back into triathlons but now I had two children and a husband that was away for work almost every single week so I just couldn't find the time to get to a pool or go for a two or three hour bike ride. Running was always easy though so I kept that up. I ran another marathon and then another and then...yawn...another...
One more year passed, and one became two and the thought of running another marathon just wasn't doing it for me any more. That's when I saw the advertisement for the Monaco Half Ironman. OOHHHHhhh...I could do that...now THAT excited me! They hadn't started accepting registrations yet but I got all the information on it from the tridrs list and then from some forums in Italy from people that had participated the previous inaugural year. I was visiting that site every second I could , studying the course, waiting for them to open registration. At the same time I started my triathlon training again: hitting the pool a couple of times a week (the baby was now in daycare), and going for long scenic rides on my bike on the weekends. I had that buzz back, I had a purpose to my training again which is really (for me) ninety percent of my incentive. An email from the Monaco organization announced that they were open for registration and that I'd better hurry since all the spots would be taken immediately. I typed as fast as I could and had nearly gotten to the end of the form when I noticed the price tag. 300,00 euro. A thirty percent increase in price from the previous year. It's not that I couldn't afford it, but I just couldn't justify plopping down 300,00 euro for a half ironman. Not right now. Not for a re-entry race. I was a little crushed but then my friend (and ex tridrs member) Mauro Mongarli suggested the Mergozzo "Medio" of 2km/90km/20km. Mergozzo is a very very small lake an hour north of Milan right above Lago Maggiore and just a few kilometres from the Swiss border. The entry fee was only 60,00. I signed up the next day.

Happy Birthday Cutey Pie!

Birthday number three!! (Isn't he just the cutest thing you've ever seen?!)

London

I can't remember the last time Olly and I had some one-on-one time together. Probably years, probably too long. She has a lot of behavior that she puts out that shows that she craves my attention, but sometimes I just don't have it. Too much work or Evan needs my attention or I'm busy with something else. Or can find it, and that's a horrible thing. So I told her we could go on vacation together, just the two of us. She chose London. We left Evan with his grandmother at the beach and P went to work for the week in Rome. It was a wonderful vacation for both of us and I learned a lot from spending time with her. I don't know if any of you have teenage children but somewhere around the age of ten or eleven they are at school all day and then they come home and close themselves in their room and play loud electric guitar music full blast. At least that's what's happened over here for the last three years. She's also had problems fitting into the small urban catholic school that she chose to go to. Well, when we landed in London she really fit in. I could really see her leaving Italy for a few years and living abroad when she gets older. She's very creative and has a lot of fantasy and ideas, she just needs to be stimulated more. She is also a hot head and loses her temper quite easily, and that is something we have to work on. We walked everywhere! I booked a hotel room right next to Kensington Gardens so I could go running in the morning while she slept in. We went shopping and marketing and took all the obligatory photos of the various monuments that she could show her English teacher. We went to Starbucks twice a day. I ate too many empty carbohydrates but they were delicious...We're already thinking about where to go next year, she's mentioned Berlin. I'll go wherever she wants.

Magic

We have two cars. One is a 1999 Volkswagon Polo (mine) and the other is a Lancia Dedra (sedan, Piero's). He bought it in 1996 and it has 412,000 kms on it. While all you Americans are trying to figure out the mileage, let me tell you, it's a lot. He travels a lot for training plus we go back and forth to his hometown at least twice a year and each drive round trip is 1400 kms.We've known for about a year that we'd have to start saving money to get a new car, and we have been saving, but then we had to get two new computers and I had to borrow some money out of the savings...anyway, we had enough to buy about a quarter of a car. The insides but not the body, the engine but not the rest of the car.
In the meantime P kept looking at what kind of car he wanted. He looked on the internet, we went to several dealerships: Toyota, Volkswagon, Audi, Fiat. We got in behind steering wheels and pretended they were our cars for several minutes. He would pour over the car manuals and add up how much it would cost to get the extras that he wanted. "So, what car should we get?" he would ask me. A few years ago I had a definate opinion. I didn't want a SUV and I didn't want an oriental car (Mitsubishi, Yyangsong, Toyota). As the years passed however and P changed his mind several times over on what he wanted, I started to not really care. I don't know about you, but I think this is much more a guy's thing. Cars. Too me a car is a car. I see if it pleases me ecsteticly, if it gets good gas mileage, but that's about where it ends for me. Guys get into fuel injection and horsepower and engine mechanics. I do get it, I mean I do understand where that can get really interesting and exciting but after you've been talking about it for two years solid in your free time, I just wanna get it over with. We finally settled on our dream car being a Volkswagon Passat station wagon. Last year we even went to this used car place in the south of Italy where they have new cars with under 5000 miles on them that they sell with a twenty five percent discount. Apart from the fact that we didn't have the money, P wanted to wait until the "new" model came out because he like the look better. Whatever. We were just dreaming anyway.
One day in the month of august, the eighth of august to be precise, P was looking on the internet for the dream car for the 128,948 time. I told him "Look, you talk about this car all the time but you're not doing anything to really make it happen. You just talk about it. You have to make it a REAL thing, something that you can touch or see." I told him that in order for it to be real, something he really wanted he had to print out a picture of his dream car and put it up in our office space so that he could see it every day. He was hesitant about printing up the best car. "Don't question whether you have the money or how much the car is going to cost or how it will happen. Just print up the car and it will happen".
On august 10th we drove down to Puglia clocking another 800 kms on the odometer. On August 12th P drove two of his athletes to the airport to go to the European championchips. Two hundred kms round trip. When he arrived back in town he took the road that headed to the beach but after five minutes on the road the car died. He said it made a big "click" sound and just died. Right on front of our mechanics house. The mechanic had been eating lunch and heard the noise and came out. He pronounced it dead on arrival.
The next day we went to the New/Used dealership. The one affordable car they had was a Volkswagon Passat tdi diesel, sedan. It only had 10,000 miles on it. We really wanted the station wagon but then the dealer showed us that the back seats come all the way down on the inside so that if you open the trunk and have the seats down you can fit as many bikes as you want in it (our main concern). The super magic part came when he showed us that he had a really good financeing for it and we could sign up right then and there and take the car away right immediately. And we did. The car is a HUGE improvement over the Dedra, but that's mainly car technology that's changed in the last ten years.
Please note that from the time I made P make his dream real and the moment we had a new car in our hands not more than a week had passed. I don't know how this works, but it does.
When explaining it to his brother P said "Do you have a favorite actress? Well, print out a photo of her..."