"I know what you're thinking."
That sentence, spoken by Tom Selleck as Magnum P.I., is what I hear when I look at this picture.
"I know what you're thinking."
Maybe you do, Tom. In the picture I am nearly done with the quarter-mile swim in the 2006 Warsaw Optimist Triathlon this past weekend. And I'm ready to be done by this point. Having never participated in this type of event before I knew nothing of what to expect as I walked out into the water Saturday morning and began my strokes. I expected the water to be cold; at 73° it felt fine to me. I expected to get bumped and kicked a couple of times; I had no such trouble. I expected to be able to set a pace and stick to it; yeah, right.
"I know what you're thinking."
I remember exactly what I was thinking at the time of this photo: "At this point I can walk in to shore faster than I can swim it." I was exhausted. While I do feel a little bad about saying this, in all of my years in organized sports I have never given as much energy during an event as I did last Saturday. I have never had recovery after an event consisting of 30 minutes of "am I going to puke or am I going to pass out?" before starting to feel better. In my defense, I have never tried to do so much with so little training either, but that is a lousy excuse.
"I know what you're thinking."
What I am thinking now is how appreciative I am of Jill and the kids coming to root me on, and for my tri-mates Dave and Joel for making up for my horrible start. I can't say if I'll do the triathlon again next year, but you know I'll be thinking about it.
