"Hi, Reality here, just checking in!"

OK class, a piece of candy to whoever can answer this question:

What does a person (who spends many, many hours in the pool and ocean every month, drills on technique, and pushes endurance in a desperate crusade to swim faster) do when he/she gets his/her ass handed to them in a 1500m swim of an Olympic triathlon?

Well, there is no real right answer of course (and no candy, suckers), but that's exactly what happened to me this past Sunday at the Huntington's Disease Olympic at Crandon Beach Park. So what did I do?

I wanted to quit.

I felt like crap after the top three guys in my wave dropped me after about 350 meters. I felt like crap when the 30-39'ers (and eventual overall podium guys) glided by me at 900 meters. I REALLY felt like crap when I came hobbling out of the water and saw the clock read "32:xx".

But I didn't want to quit because I felt like crap. I felt like crap because I wanted to quit. Fortunately, something or someone reminded me that exiting the water with the fastest guys in the race wasn't exactly part of the original plan.

Please press 1 to leave a voice message. "Hi, this is Reality here. Call me when you get a chance!"

Oh, don't worry. This isn't another generic sob post about how "I overcame my demons" and "broke my barriers". This is merely an observation of how false expectations, even the ones that go unspoken, can really mess with your (or, in this case my) head.

So what was that all about? You would have thought Kimbo Slice just beat me down in .03 seconds and thrown my butt to other side of Key Biscayne had you interviewed me coming out of the water.

"Hey, it's Reality again. Remember a year and a half ago? When you could barely swim 25 meters to the other side of the pool? Wow, that was funny! Anyway, gimme a call!"

Triathlon is a great sport because you can completely suck in one discipline on race day - or maybe just in general - and try to make up for it in the other two. In this particular case, I managed to pull my head out of the depths of certain personal bodily cavities and churn out a solid bike split, followed by a good run.

The lesson here? A couple of worthwhile ones. 1) It doesn't matter what the clock says until you cross the finish line. 2)Don't ever, EVER, think about quitting unless you have a damn good reason, because, 3) finishing with a "bad" time is always better than a DNF. And, 4) eat lots of pancakes and frozen yogurt after races (unless you DNF, of course).

Huntington's Olympic splits:

1500m Swim: 32:43 (turns out the fastest swim of the day was a 27:42)
40KM Bike: 1:03:14 (23.5 MPH, OLY-distance personal best)
10KM Run: 40:18 (OLY-distance personal best - sub 40 on the horizon!)
Total: 2:19:23

1st place 25-29M. However, the real Age Group win for 25-29M should go to Brian Monagan of Coconut Grove, who I've never met. The guy churned out a monster bike and blitzkrieg run to take 3rd overall in the race, just missing Key Biscayne podium fixtures John Reback (1) and Boris Fernandez (2) and serving a healthy-sized plate of beat down on the rest of the 25-29M wave.

All in all, important lessons were learned, a new bike setup was proven with a PR(details to follow), a PR on the run, and MOST IMPORTANTLY a great race for a great cause was held.

Reality, ahem, thanks for getting back to me. Hope to see you soon.