The Triathlon, Part VI - or - Fried Chicken at Thirty Thousand Feet

I’d packed light: running shoes, bike gloves, swim goggles, athletic bra, tank top, running pants, bike glasses, a rented wetsuit, and everything else I’d need for six days were crammed into a wheeled carry-on bag and a backpack. I printed my boarding pass at an easy check-in station and went through security, unpacking my compact bags into no less than four different bins like a strand of DNA unraveling in a black hole and reassembling itself on the other side. I was hungry already when I saw the sign for BJ’s Market in concourse K. One side effect of all this training it that I’m hungry pretty much all the time, and not just for any food, but for high fat, high protein items. BJ’s makes a mean fried chicken, and the more I thought about it the hungrier I became. My flight was about to board, but I didn’t think I could make it until I landed in Logan Airport two and a half hours later before eating. I walked to the counter at BJ’s with purpose.
“Can you put it in a container that I can carry with me onto the plane?” I asked the bespectacled server. She nodded patiently with a look in her eye that let me know I wasn’t the first customer to ask this. “Great, I’ll take a quarter chicken,” I said.
“What sides would you like with that?” she asked.
“Mac and cheese, and mashed potatoes,” I said.
“You want gravy on you mashed potatoes?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, without hesitation.
“You get a corn muffin with that too,” she said. I couldn’t have been happier. I paid for my meal and rolled to gate K19, where boarding had begun.

“This is a full flight,” a woman announced, “passengers are allowed one carry on item and one personal item. If your carry on bag is too large, or you have more than two items, you may be asked to check your bag.” It dawned on me that my fried chicken might send me over the number of items allowed onto the flight. I didn’t have time to eat it before getting on the plane, but I wasn’t going to let anyone take it away from me. I stood up and arranged myself so that I was wearing my backback, pulling the rolling carry-on with my right hand, and holding the box of fried chicken in my left. I draped my sweatshirt over my left arm, concealing the fried chicken container. I approached the gate with my fried chicken-bearing arm dipped below my waist so that the man who scanned my ticket wouldn’t see it. I passed him without incident, and walked down the length of the ramp to the airplane. I found my seat and put the fried chicken container in my lap, and continued to conceal it with my sweatshirt. I was on the aisle sitting next to a pair of blonde, teenaged girls who were traveling with their mother and younger sister seated one row ahead. I was at risk of becoming part of their travel story, I could picture their father picking them up in Boston and asking about their flight.
“The woman sitting next to us came on board with a box of fried chicken," they’d say, and then maybe roll their eyes or pop their gum or put their hands on their hips, “I mean, who brings fried chicken onto an airplane anyway?” Then their father might say “really?”, or he might tell them that there’s all kinds of people in this world, or maybe he would say that if the worst thing that happened on the flight was that a woman sat next to them and ate fried chicken with beastly voracity that they should consider themselves lucky. Then the teenaged girls would sigh, and sit behind their parents in a car that would be driven to a house where they’d eat their own dinner, and forget that we ever crossed paths.

The plane took off, and once the fasten seatbelts sign dimmed a number of passengers opened containers of food that had been bought in concourse K. Sensible Caesar salads and loose meat sandwiches were being consumed throughout the cabin, but I didn’t see anyone else eating fried chicken. I glanced over at the girls on my left, they had both adjusted their seat backs into a reclining position, their eyes were closed, and they had covered themselves with Winnie-the-Pooh blankets. I released my tray table and pulled my box of fried chicken out from underneath my sweatshirt. I probably filled the entire cabin with the smell of fried chicken, but I’ve never had a more satisfying in-flight meal.

II

Muggy picked me up from the Barnstable stop on the Plymouth & Brockton bus line, and was impressed with how little I’d brought with me. We drove to Thuan Loi, a Vietnamese restaurant in South Yarmouth, and when I walked in the owner greeted me with a warm “Hiiiii, long time no see,” although it was my first visit. The owner’s son, an inquisitive boy of about seven years old, was drawn to my purse because it had an image of a bicycle stitched onto it. He stood between me and the dining room asking about it until his mother intervened.
“He asks a lot of questions,” she said. She waited on our table, and when I ordered a lime soda, she jotted something onto a pad of paper and said “number four.”
“Yes, and, um, number twenty four,” I said, reading the number next to a description of a bowl of noodles with fried tofu. Muggy ordered number eighteen, which was the same as mine only with steak, and I wished I’d ordered the same after I tasted it.

We finished our meal and drove to Muggy’s art-filled apartment in Eastham. Muggy is an upholsterer by trade, works part time as an accountant, and has an artistic bent. Her own artwork and works by friends of hers adorn the walls of her home, she has so many that some are in storage. A fish sculpture is fixed onto the wall of her bathroom, and several canvases and prints cover the walls of her living room and bedroom. She’s part of a small population of year-round dwellers on Cape Cod, and I generally visit her off-season when we have the whole peninsula to ourselves. There’s one highway that runs the length of the Cape, Route 6. On Friday evenings in the summer it gets jammed all the way from Boston to Provincetown, and the traffic runs nonstop all night long outside Muggy’s apartment. I unpacked my things in her workroom, where she keeps a working antique sewing machine and a whiteboard to keep track of her upholstering assignments. Above the whiteboard someone had written on the wall in script: “Muggy, always remember: do your best, fuck the rest.” It made me feel good to sleep under this message on the nights leading up to the triathlon.

In the morning we biked to First Encounter Beach, named for the spot where the pilgrims and Native Americans first encountered one another in 1620, so that I could have an encounter of my own with my rented wetsuit. I’d tried it on in Chicago to make sure it fit, but hadn’t actually tried to swim in it yet. The suit is made of black neoprene, covers me from my ankles to my neck, and has sleeves that go to my wrists. It zips up the back with a zipper attached to a long strip of fabric that enables the wearer to get themselves in and out of it. I began sweating immediately under the bright morning sun, and it was a relief to immerse myself in cool, salty water. I quickly discovered that the suit made me buoyant, which was a great relief. I’ve been a little nervous about the swimming part of the race since I signed up; I can always stop biking or running if I get tired, but I can’t stop swimming. I tested what would happen if I remained motionless in the water, and skimmed the top like a waterbug moving in the current.

From there we stopped by Idle Times Bike Shop, where I’d rented a racing bike and helmet for the weekend. The shop is owned and run by a mutual friend of Muggy and mine named Peter, and he let me take the bike Friday and return it Monday even though I’d only paid him for two days. Peter’s largesse is pronounced in the summertime, when his shop is open twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and is always busy. Last summer he gave me a pair of Chrome Shins free of charge, originally he was going to sell them to me at wholesale price but when I came to the shop to pick them up he refused payment. I sent him a reproduction vintage cycling poster when I got back to Chicago as a thank you, and he had it framed and hung on a wall of his shop.

I’ve never ridden a racing bike, so I took it down to the bike path near Muggy’s apartment to test it out. It weighed less than a bag of groceries, and seemed to read my mind. If I so much as thought about turning left, it did so. I called Peter to ask about adjusting the seat, and told him how amazing it was to ride.
“It should be, that’s a two thousand dollar bike,” he said.
“Well I’m taking pictures then, because this is the only time I’ll be riding a bike like that," I said. I began to wonder how much of athleticism is a matter of having the right equipment.

We met up with my co-triathlete, MamaVee, and her family for a pasta dinner at her in-laws house in Welfleet. I’d met her in-laws once the previous summer, and was convinced that her father in law, Dan, wasn’t fond of me. He’d asked me about my job, and seemed put off by my answer to a question regarding the salary of the CEO at my organization. He seemed not to remember me and asked me what I did for a living.
“I’m unemployed at the moment,” I said.
“Are you in town on vacation?” he asked.
“I’m doing the triathlon with MamaVee,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, “you’re doing that?” It was more of a statement than a question.
“Uh-huh,” I said. In the tradition of carbo-loading before a race, he’d made spaghetti and meat sauce, and baked two loaves of bread. MamaVee’s husband Ben added to the feast with a large order of barbecued ribs and fried chicken from Marconi Beach Restaurant. I sat next to Dan at dinner, and we talked about the race.
“We signed up in February,” I told him.
“Oh,” he said, “when you were still working.”
“When I was still working?” I exclaimed, “Wow Dan, I should call you every morning for motivation.” The skin around his eyes crinkled, he reached his hand out and lightly touched my arm. It occurred to me that perhaps he didn't dislike me, that this was just his way. MamaVee confirmed this when she told me what Dan had said to her in preparation for the race: "Good luck. You'll need it."

After dinner Muggy, MamaVee, Ben, and I studied the map of the race site. It started at 7:30, and Falmouth was about an hour drive from Eastham, so Ben and MamaVee would pick up me and Muggy by 5 a.m. with their car and a rack that held four bikes. We’d have time to find parking, bike to the race site, and check in before the race.

III

I set my cell phone alarm for 4 a.m. I wanted time to stretch properly, eat something, and maybe even drink some coffee. I went to bed at 10 p.m., and woke up in the dark. I fumbled for my cell phone and read the time: 11:15 p.m. I'd only been asleep for an hour and was already waking up in anticipation of the alarm. I woke up again at 1:30, 2:15, and finally got out of bed when I woke at 3:20. Muggy was up too, I put on some coffee and started my stretching routine.

It was dark when Ben and MamaVee arrived, but already there were birds singing. Ben loaded the bikes onto the rack, and the four of us piled into the car. We flew along the near-empty highway as the sun rose, giddy with expectation and sleep deprivation. We arrived at the race site by 6:15. MamaVee and I headed to the registration table, Ben and Muggy went to find something to eat. I was assigned number 394, MamaVee was 343, and we were given corresponding chip timing devices to wear around our ankles. We parked our bikes onto numbered racks, and got our bodies numbered with black marker. Our race number was written on our right arm, and the letter E was written on our right calf, which corresponded with the 35-39 age bracket. All around us people with numbered and lettered limbs milled around, and it was strange to know just by looking at someone’s leg what age group they belonged to. Waiting in line for the ladies room I stood behind a D and an E, and later I spotted Gs, Hs and Is. It was unsettling at first, but then became an interesting point of demographic study. There were people of all ages at the race, and all body types. At first I only noticed the fit, elite athletes in skin-tight, aerodynamic clothing, but there were types of all kinds represented.

We walked onto the rocky beach and assembled ourselves into swim waves, MamaVee was in wave number 4, I was in wave 5. A race organizer called the first wave into the water and they ran in, sending a spray of water three feet into the air. Three minutes later wave 2 was called, and three minutes after that wave 3. I looked out at the floating orange markers in Nantucket Sound, the masses of people swimming furiously through it like schools of fish, and the wet-suited, swim-capped people waiting for their turn. Standing on the beach in my green swim cap that indicated my status as a first timer, my stomach began to sit low in my body. Wave 4 was called, and MamaVee ran out into the water and started swimming like a pro. I joined wave 5 at the tide mark, and waited. I ran in when my wave was called, swam a few strokes and had to stop for air. My adrenaline was high, and I couldn’t get my breathing under control. I tread water and did a weak version of the breast stroke as I took fast breaths. I put my face back into the water and swam a few more freestyle strokes, then had to stop for air again. A woman in a white cap a few feet ahead of me spotted my green cap and asked me if this was my first triathlon.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re doing great, keep going,” she said. I swam in this manner, starting and stopping, for the entire length of the race. At the end I saw Muggy and Ben on the platform, Muggy was jumping up and down and yelling
“Come on champ!” I climbed out of the water and ran past the timer, and a high pitched noise emitted from it. I ran to my bike, unzipped my wetsuit and wrestled my way out of it, switched my goggles for glasses, dusted the sand off my feet, put on my socks, sneakers, bike gloves and helmet, and headed for the bike race start.

I went so fast it felt dangerous. In my mind it seemed that the physics of it couldn’t possibly work - the bike was so light, how could it keep from flipping over? I passed by an injured athlete off the side of the road being tended to by a medic, and it seemed like a warning. There were hills that made me stand on the pedals and push with all my strength, something I'm not used to as a flatlander, and valleys that made me go so fast that at one point I started pumping the brakes. My experience of biking is through city streets on a commuter bike, negotiating traffic, red lights and stop signs. This was entirely different. People along the side of the road had come out to watch, some of them sitting passively in folding chairs, others on their feet clapping and cheering as we sped past. Ben and Muggy were at the finish line again, cheering me on. I crossed the timer and walked the bike back to the rack.

I unstrapped my helmet, removed my gloves, and took a few minutes to stretch. We’d been given goodie bags containing a water bottle, a t-shirt that I’ll probably never wear, and an assortment of energy bars. I grabbed a tube of something that claimed to provide instant energy. It was liquidy and sickly sweet, and tasted like raspberry yogurt. I sucked it down and went to the run start line. Ben and Muggy were at the race start, cheering me on still. The run was flat, and I began to zone out with the repetition of putting one foot in front of the other behind a long line of other people doing the same. At one point I felt like I wasn’t actually there in the moment, that I was recalling a time when I’d run down a stretch of road along a beach. I had to remind myself that I was still in it, experiencing the race as it unfolded. Halfway through I caught up to MamaVee, she’d just made the hairpin turn at the midpoint of the race and was heading back. We held out our hands and high-fived each other. During the last mile and a half the crowds of onlookers had thinned, but the few who remained were enthusiastic.
“Come on number three ninety four!” One woman yelled as I ran past, “looking good, almost there!”
“Thank you!” I said, and kept going. At the race end, I crossed the final timer, and having read my name from the information on the chip, an announcer's voice said:
“Number three ninety four, J. Palmer from Chicago, Illinois!” I clasped my hands together and threw them high above my left shoulder, and then my right in a victory dance as I ran under a digital clock readout. A staffer stationed nearby watched my dance and said:
“Okay, hand over the chip showoff .” I reached down and released the Velcro grip from my ankle, and handed her my timer. “Did you come here on vacation?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“This isn’t how to spend a vacation,” she said. I chuckled and moved on.

I found MamaVee, and we exchanged a sweaty embrace.
“How do you feel?" she asked.
“I feel good," I said.
“I feel weirdly okay," MamaVee said, and I nodded in agreement. “I would do this again."
“Yeah, so would I." I said.

After rinsing off under an outdoor shower and stopping for coffee, the four of us loaded back into the car and headed back to Eastham. It wasn’t even lunchtime, and the main event of the day was already over. We spent the afternoon at a pond with Tuber and Girlpie, Mamavee and Ben’s kids. The still, clear pond water was cool and relaxing.

The race results were posted online by Sunday night. Here’s the breakdown: I swam 1/3 of a mile in 12:23, biked 9.25 miles in 47:38, and ran 3.1 miles in 35:01. My overall time was 1:35:04. MamaVee's times were 10:39, 45:18, and 39:55, with an overall time of 1:35:53. We finished within a minute of each other.

Not bad for first timers.

The Triathlon, Part V - or - how I paid my way to Cape Cod with French

I've been busy. Running, swimming and biking take up a lot of time. I'm getting better at swimming, but it's still hard. I swam 15 laps in a row once last week and was really proud of myself; I've been doing "bricks," where I do two of the three sports in quick succession; and one day I did all three parts - with breaks, over the course of about four hours.

Then I got an email about getting paid to be a test subject for a French fluency exam at Northwestern University. The timing was tight - there were two days of listening comprehension last weekend, and two days of reading comprehension next weekend which I can't do because I'll be on Cape Cod. They were testing during the week too, so I could squeeze the reading test in just before departing this Thursday for my sporty journey to the east. I could sign up to do just the listening comprehension test and get paid $280, or sign up for both and get paid $560. I've been keeping a mental list of the costs associated with the triathlon, and it goes something like this:

Flight to Boston $180
Race registration fee $65
Bike and helmet rental $50
Wetsuit rental $50
Running shoes $80
Swimming lessons $120
Total: $545

The allure of covering my triathlon costs was strong, my French fluency almost never results in cash rewards, and I can't think of another time when I was offered money in exchange for taking a standardized test. I signed up for both sections.

I heard about the test through an email from the Groupe Professionnel Francophone. I attended a couple of their meetings a few years ago while on a job search, I wanted to find a job where I could use my French skills and thought it might be a good networking opportunity. I signed up to be on their email list, and have been receiving communications from them ever since. They meet on the last Thursday of the month in the restaurant of the Renaissance Hotel on Wacker Drive, and their meetings generally start with a speaker, followed by wine and hors d'oevres. The first meeting I attended went well; the speaker was from the Haitian consulate, and I managed to speak French with a number of people without slipping into English. The next time I went, a roundish man in his fifties who recognized me from an event at the Alliance Francaise sat next to me at the bar, and after talking to me for a few minutes asked me for my number, ostensibly so that we could practice speaking French with each other. I froze and submitted to his request rather than politely declining. I sat next to him, mute and powerless, as he dialed my home phone number on his cell phone. He explained that he was doing this so that he'd have the number programmed into his phone and wouldn't lose the scrap of paper that I'd written it on. My secret hopes were realized when he held the phone to his ear and said:
"Allo?" in a tone of genuine surprise. "Someone picked up," he said to me.
"Yes, my husband," I said. I haven't been back since.

Early last Saturday morning I took the #93 California/Dodge bus from the corner of Lawrence and Kimball to the campus of Northwestern University in downtown Evanston. I hitched my bike onto the rack on the front of the bus so that I could bike the nine miles home in the afternoon, fulfilling the need for continuous training. I'd never been on the Northwestern campus, so I parked my bike and asked a woman seated on a bench nearby if the building in front of us was University Hall.
"Yes, for ze French test?" she said, in a French accent.

Inside people were milling around a lecture room on the south side of the building. My friend Carla spotted me and I sat near her, we know each other from taking classes at the Alliance Francaise and I'd forwarded the information about the test to her in case she wanted to cash in too. The woman who'd emailed us the information was standing at the front of the room with a name tag hanging around her neck on a lanyard. I asked her if I could come back on Tuesday and Wednesday for the reading portion of the test.
"I don't know," she said from under a helmet of dyed, dried and sprayed blonde hair, "I am not the one administering the test." The testing hadn't even begun and already I was being subjected to French, not just the language but the bureaucracy and minimal customer service. If this had been a test for English, the woman wearing a lanyard would have distributed pencils at the door and thanked us all for taking time out of our weekends to join her for this important, final phase in creating a fluency exam. I sat down and waited for the test administrator, whoever that might be.

A slight, gray-haired man in ironed khakis and a polo shirt entered the room carrying a stack of test booklets. He placed them at a podium at the front of the room and addressed us in a calm, French accented voice. There was a problem, he said. The announcement about the tests had resulted in an overwhelming response, and while he was very happy with the turnout, there were only twenty-five test booklets and about fifty of us in the room. Would it be possible for half of us to leave and come back on Monday? A handful of people stood up and left the room. Someone asked if it was possible to make copies of the test booklets. Yes, the man said, but this would take time, and the test had to start in a few minutes. The woman seated to my left suggested that we split into two rooms, and each room take a different section of the test, since there were four sections to be administered. It took a few minutes for the ironed-pants man to consider this logic; it was out of the box thinking, and he was staying true to the French ideal of making everything more complicated than it needs to be. Eventually he acquiesced.

The booklets were distributed, along with answer sheets. The test was multiple choice, and the answer sheet had round circles to be filled in with a number 2 pencil, like the SATs. At the top of the page there was a spot for marking our name, test section, and testing location. Near that were sections asking for military rank: officer, enlisted, or civilian, and branch of service: army, navy, air force, marines, or other. I'd had a hint that this was for the Department of Defense, the email had mentioned something called the Defense Language Institute. I felt a sudden pang of discomfort, and soothed myself with the thought that at least I'd be getting some of my war tax dollars back, and since I was doing this in the name of physical fitness it couldn't be that much of a conflict of interest. I signed a confidentiality agreement stating that I won't divulge the contents of the exam, so I can't tell you what the questions were or I'll end up on a list somewhere.

I spent ten hours over the course of the weekend in that room listening to recorded questions emanating from a small CD player propped up at the podium, and filling in circles with a pencil. Although I wasn't directly interacting with anyone, by the end my fellow test takers were getting on my nerves. As time passed, the amount of sneezing, coughing, and sighing increased markedly. One person even blew their nose as the rest of the room strained to listed to an audio question.

There were more subtle annoyances too, things that ordinarily wouldn't bother me became irritating due to close proximity and time elapsed. One woman showed up to the test wearing a dress made from fabric that had the map of Paris printed on it, just in case anyone was wondering why she was in the room, and a woman in the front row did everything possible to draw attention to herself. Her hair was cut short and dyed dark red, and she wore chunky Chanel glasses frames. She sat on the far left side of the room, and adjusted her chair so that she was sitting at a jaunty angle to the rest of us. She made a grand demonstration of erasing pencil marks from her answer sheet and brushing away the eraser remains with her right hand, creating continuous background noise to our test-taking activities. During breaks she turned around in her seat and asked questions like:
"What did you put down for number twenty-seven?". On the second day of testing I arrived early to find her writing things on the blackboard and explaining the finer points of French grammar to the only other person who had shown up as early as me.

Annoyances aside, it was a satisfying experience. I got paid for using my brain, got to pretend I was a student at a prestigious university for a couple days, and the bike ride home was gorgeous. I headed west to McCormick Boulevard and followed the North Channel Trail all the way home, and even spotted a baby bunny on the way. Yesterday I went back for the first two parts of the reading comprehension test, which was easier since everyone goes at their own pace and there's no audio cues to listen for. Today I'll bike to the Y to swim my 15 laps, and then take my bike onto the #93 up to Evanston for the two remaining sections of the reading test. Then I'll come home and pack my things for the flight to Boston in the morning. Four days and counting till the triathlon...

The Triathlon, Part IV

There’s a sign at the Y informing swimmers that the presence of feces in the pool constitutes something called “code brown”. I made the mistake of thinking about this too hard while swimming and laughed underwater, sending a shot of chlorinated liquid up my nostrils. Swimming has gotten easier over the past few months, but it’s still the hardest of the three sports that make up the mini-triathlon, now just fourteen days away. I can swim 10 laps without stopping, up from three when I started training. There’s 44 laps to a mile at my local YMCA pool, and the swimming portion of the race is 1/3 of a mile, or just under 15 laps. I’m not sure how this is going to work on race day, unless I just go really, really slowly.

I’ve definitely gotten into better shape; I have noticeable triceps now and I can’t stop touching them and showing them to people, but being in good shape is all relative. The first time I ran around Horner Park without stopping, the music in my head shifted from the theme to Chariots of Fire to the Rocky theme song as I rounded the corner to finish the last fifty yards to my house. Some boys sitting on the porch across the street started laughing, and I wasn’t sure why until one of them yelled:
"Joo wanna take a breather?" I pretended not to hear them and ran up my front steps like Rocky at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Once during Adult Lap Swim Time at the Y I stopped to ask the lifeguard how many laps make a mile because I’d forgotten. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, his straight brown hair hung down into his eyes, and the Beach Boys’ "Surfing USA" blasted from a portable radio next to his chair.
"How many laps make a mile?" I asked from the shallow end of the pool. He looked at me from his perch.
"What?" he asked over the music, a rescue tube hanging over his shoulder like a large, reddish sausage.
"How many laps make a mile?" I repeated, louder this time.
"Do you need help?" he asked.
"No," I said, the skirt of my bathing suit floating up to my waist in the water, did I really look that bad?

I haven’t lost any weight but my clothes are loose; I can pull my jeans off without unzipping them, which is a fun party trick. I thought I was ready for a new bathing suit - one without a skirt, but I just don’t have the confidence to flash my pale, meaty thighs to the world, powerful and muscular though they may be. Sometimes I feel like Bruce Banner’s half-creature, the thing he becomes just before turning into the Hulk, minus the shredding clothes and the rage. Sometimes people notice that there’s been a change in my appearance, and I’m always disappointed when they don’t.

Today I’m going to attempt all three parts of the triathlon, with breaks between them. Wish me luck.

The Triathlon, Part II

Yesterday I decided it was time to hit the pool, but not before sustaining a minor injury at home while cleaning the kitchen. For months now I’ve been meaning to go through the cabinets and sort everything into piles: one for the trash, one for recycling, one for the Salvation Army, and one to keep; then put everything back in a way that makes sense. I've never gotten around to it, because it seems too huge of a project and I get overwhelmed. I started with the microwave nook. We have a miniature purple microwave that only has one setting, and it lives in a cabinet under the kitchen counter. Crammed above it on a wobbly shelf that’s missing two pegs is my mother’s dark orange cast iron Le Creuset stock pot from her first wedding in 1964, and resting on top of that is an inverted tray. I pulled the tray, sending the cast iron cookware on a short trip to the floor, connecting with my shins on the way down. I actually cried, I felt like such a baby but no one but the cats were around to witness it so I indulged. The stock pot had a scratch in the orange enamel that ran from top to bottom, and I had the beginnings of at least three bruises.

I spent the next six hours taking things out of cabinets, filling up bags of recycling and taking them into the alley, dusting, vacuuming, and putting things back. Intermittently I checked the Irving Park YMCA pool schedule. Along with the schedule was a page listing pool protocol, and information on pool closures:

The pool will be closed for the following reasons:
Vomit/Bodily Fluids/Feces
Missing Swimmer
Fire
The pool with NOT be closed for the following reasons:
Severe tornado watch/warning or weather alert
Lightening

I was amused and horrified, and chuckled at the misspelled “Lightening”. I couldn't imagine how a swimmer would go missing in such a small pool, or how a fire could break out, and decided right then and there that if I ever saw vomit, bodily fluids or feces I would withdraw my name from the triathlon, or just skip that part of the race.

By early evening I was tired from housework, and my shins were angry from their run in with the stock pot, but I couldn’t possibly let another day pass without swimming. This is sure to be the hardest part of the race for me; while I have the stamina for it I’ve never been technically proficient at swimming. I took lessons when I was about six or seven, and was afraid of putting my face in the water. At summer camp I never moved beyond Advanced Beginners, and though I've participated in a few distance swims, I always bring up the rear.

I piled everything I needed into two pannier bags and set out into the cold rain on my bike. At the front desk of the Y I bought a swim cap and a Master lock from the same woman who'd taken my registration a few weeks ago, and as soon as I reached the women's locker room I had to go back upstairs and ask her for the pass code to get in. I almost forgot it again on the short journey back down, and had to try it twice before I got it right. I’d reversed the numbers in my head, something I do frequently with phone numbers and addresses. At least twice in the last month I’ve gotten lost looking for addresses that I’ve written down incorrectly. I’ve never been tested for dyslexia, but if there’s a dyslexia specific to numbers I’m sure I have it.

I chose a locker and set my things down, and realized I’d have to remember the combination on the Master lock. Great. I left the sticker with the combination on the back in case I forgot it between now and when I came back for my things, which proved to be a useful strategy.

I suited up and went into the humid shower room where a woman with a tattoo on her shoulder was rinsing off, then opened the heavy door to the pool.

It was even more beautiful than I remembered it. Besides the words “deep” and “shallow” spelled out in tiny blue tile, there were intricate designs along the walls, and numbers indicating how many feet deep the pool was in any given spot.

Along the shallow end of the pool was a banner reading:

Irving Park YMCA Iguanas
2006 Champions
Boys division, age 8 and under

The banner was flanked by two shelves covered in trophies. Along the length of the pool were two large boards spelling out the pool rules, the first one covering rules A through G, the second H through P.

There were four lanes, and five people in the pool. I took the far left lane, next to a dark haired man in goggles, his eyeglasses folded neatly at the edge of the pool. I wore my glasses into the pool like a ninety year old man. My father once lost a pair of glasses this way while swimming in the ocean, and I lost a coveted pair of vintage sunglasses by diving into a lake with them on my face, but I figured someone would come to my aid if my glasses slipped off at the Y. I swam the length of the pool and saw a sign off the deep end that read: “44 laps to a mile”. I swam a few more lengths before realizing that I didn’t know if a lap meant the length of the pool going one way, or both. I asked the distracted lifeguard, a serious woman in her early twenties who clutched a clipboard to her chest. To my dismay, a lap was both ways.

“A mile is 88 times back and forth” she said, and dribbled a red rubber ball onto the damp floor from her perch.

I’d lost track of how many lengths I’d swum, so I made up a number – 8, and decided I would try to swim a quarter mile, or 22 lengths. By the time I was done I could hear the pulse of my own blood in my ears and was breathing hard. I was so tired once I got home that I weaved up the back stairs, and almost dropped the bike a couple times. This morning I registered for the "Adult Intermediate" swim class to get some help with my form. I wanted to sign up for "Adult Stroke Clinic," but it had been canceled due to lack of interest. It's just as well I guess, it's a terrible name for a class.