The following is Tammy's story of being in the Chicago Accenture Triathlon on August 29, 2004. She wrote this the next day. By the way, I signed up for that text messaging thing she mentions. It was very cool. I went to the Accenture website, and put in my cellphone number, and who I wanted to track (Tammy and our next door neighbor Steve). Then, during the race, every once in a while, my cellphone would beep and say something like, "Tammy has finished the bike leg of the race at 01h 20m 29s". Accenture's system informed me instantly of where Tammy was in the race, and it helped! Last time I saw Tammy do this, in the Naperville Triathlon, it was an hour of "I wonder where she is?", followed by a quick moment of, "Wait! There she goes! Oh, man, we almost missed her!". Not so this time. God bless technology, and kudos to Accenture for such a slick system!

Raj

Now, onto Tammy's story...

For those who did not sign up to get the results sent to your phone/pager/IM (silly you! It was really neat!), here is the long story....

It was a mean day in Chicago - air temp 60 degrees (maybe), angry Lake, cloudy sky, strong winds. Having signed myself and my neighbor Steve (my "client") up in the special Corporate Invitational, they generously slotted us into Wave 1. For people not in the know, in a large Triathlon, athletes go off in waves about every 4 or 5 minutes. In our race, waves were 150 people per group, every four minutes to accommodate the 7500 racers in about 5 hours time. That's a lot of bodies.

Being in Wave 1 has its ups and downs. In our case, first Wave meant first into freezing cold Lake Michigan (64 degrees) at 6:15 am for the ½ mile swim. I was wearing a wet suit (as was Steve, in a "night before panic buy") which certainly helped, but it was still cold, and cloudy and the wind was kicking up 2-3 foot swells. You can imagine me in the water with a 150 people in about a 20x20 foot holding space. They sound a horn and it is a flying mass of arms and legs. You get kicked, hit, swum over, etc. Anyway, we were off.

I swam about 150 yards of front crawl and was getting battered, having a heck of a time breathing in the tight suit and the cold. Spun over and backstroked most of the rest of the way -which was good, Raj said I was actually passing some people. Everyone universally hated the swim yesterday, it was nasty. I finished in 24 mins, which is long for me.

Then, ½ mile jog up to the transition area where I was out of my wetsuit and into bike gear and off up Lake Shore drive. Normally a beautiful ride. Today, cloudy, cool and very windy. Heading North was a slog and it was about now that I was saying to myself... "why did I do this again?" and worse - "why did I send messages to all my friends telling them I was doing this?"

Made the turn on the bike and coming South was a breeze with the tailwind - I probably averaged 22-23 mph on the way back (making up for the pathetic 14mph or so I did on the way out). About 49 mins on the bike. Back into Transition into running shoes and out for a nice 5K run down the lakefront, around the Planetarium and Aquarium and to the finish. Legs wobbly, but got it done -thanks to Steve - who was running about 4 mins ahead of me at this point and kept shouting encouraging things like "I am stopping for churrios next corner, want one? And "you go girl" every time we crossed paths.

Now, as you all know - my goal was 2 hours. I rounded the corner on to Columbus drive to see the course clock at 1:59:38 or something and thought "oh crap!". I turned on the burners (ha!) and sprinted the last block coming in at precisely 1:59:52. That is about as close as I can cut it :-)

Then, I nearly puked :-).

I hope I have inspired all of you to give this sport a try. It's pretty different, but a great overall workout, and on a normal day, truly a lot of fun.

Next year... the Olympic distance - 1500m/40km/10k - who's with me???

Tired and sore, but still feeling proud :-)

Tammy