first podium @ black diamond

the race

I’m still kind of on a high from my race over the weekend, getting my first age group podium, placing 5th. Even though I personally don’t consider 5th a podium, but I’m not going to argue with the organizers decision making it one, haha, even more so being in Trump country. Even more so with how my season has started so far, having a disappointing first race and then the DNF at Ironman CDA. The constant struggle of dealing with cold lakes and how it was affecting my performance. It was great to finally not have that problem and have a pretty okay race.

I was also pretty confident that I was the only trans person there, and also not surprised either as there aren’t many of us in triathlon to begin with. I’m still proud representing my community in areas that might not be very friendly towards us. I never hide the fact that I’m trans at these races knowing full well that it has the potential of opening myself up to hate, judgement, questions, etc. I definitely encountered some of that at the race, but I’ll get into that in more detail later in the post.

the swim

I was a little bit excited that we were in the middle of a heatwave, as my first two races, the lake temperature had been a huge problem for me. At Lake Wilderness the lake was very cold and was shivering uncontrollably during the transition which really doomed my bike as I struggled to keep my body’s core temperature up. Then we had Ironman CDA where I was pulled from the swim due to hypothermia.

This time I didn’t have to worry about any of that, the lake was absolutely perfect and it showed with my pace. It was the fastest swim in a race to date, averaging a 2:03/100 yd, which blew me away as I’m not a strong swimmer. It was great to see it and I think it’s showing my 5-ish year training is finally starting to show improvement. My swim was a little affected by how the organizers decided to do their starts. The Olympic was two laps and at the start of my second lap the women’s sprint race started, so I was stuck in that mass group of racers. It really took me out of my rhythm having to deal with all the swimmers and navigating around people who quickly found out they went out too strong and created traffic jams. But once I got to the Olympic distance buoy it got calmer and quickly got back into my rhythm.

The layout of the swim course was a bit awkward as well, they went with a diamond shape which threw off my sighting a little bit which made me swim more than I should have. I’m not sure why they went with a diamond shape when the lake was wide enough to be a rectangle. Again, just something I’ve never encountered before and was a good learning experience that not all races keep things at 90-degree angles and straight.

the bike

The bike went really well compared to Lake Wilderness. The course is pretty flat, which is always my favorite. I was able to get into my zone pretty quickly and I know I made up a lot of time, granted it was making up my transition time more than anything.

The course was kind of wonky, having a couple out and backs with a U-turn in the middle of an active highway, luckily, they had cops to stop traffic but it just created an unnecessary risk to rider safety. I had a close call on the second out and back U-turn as the second one didn’t have anyone directing/stopping traffic and had an overly aggressive motorist coming dangerously close to side swiping me. A lot of riders behind me came up to me after the race saying that it was a really close call from their perspective.

Again, not optimal but you always have to work with what the organizers can get away with when designing the course.

the run

I continue to struggle with the run, just trying to keep my body going and pushing. I always feel fine and somewhat fresh but I think it’s just a defense mechanism in my brain that tells everything to stop. I just need to learn how to break through that and allow myself to push a little more.

But it was better than I usually do in past races, which is promising. Even though I’m much stronger running in training, translating that into a race is a constant learning process. The organizers decided to change the run course layout because of the heatwave keeping the majority of it in the shade. The downside to that being it was on hiking trails which I don’t really train on. I couldn’t complain too much because I knew it would have been a complete disaster if it was on pavement in the sun/heat.

transitions

T1 and T2 are really hurting my overall times. I’m spending too much time in transition and something I need to continue to work on. I know in T1 I spend extra time drying off and just getting things on for the bike and run consuming more than it should. I might consider not wearing cycling gloves as they are more difficult to put on when damp but they also resolve some nerve issues I have in my hands that I experience a lot when riding. Getting ready for the run I know getting my socks on takes most of the time, thanks to the sweat built up while riding. I wish I could find shoes that I could get away without wearing socks.

dealing with being trans…

I experienced a bit more issues than normal at a race. I think it was more heightened due to the fact I “podiumed”. There were a couple of times on the bike where I was kind of stocked by a car. The same car popped up a couple times when I was riding on the highway where they would yell out “tranny” from the car. It was weird that someone would actively go to their car during the race and look for me on the road, but haters do some crazy things. I’m just glad they didn’t take it further than just yelling at the car. They could have easily just hit me and most likely gotten away with it, so I was pretty fortunate there.

The awkwardness of redoing the awards because they didn’t call my name had having to stand with the men rather than next to women. I was told that I needed to stand on the 5th place marker. It just seemed silly.

Also, like at all my races this season I carry my trans pride flag with me and have it out when approaching/crossing the finish line. They didn’t call my name when finishing like they did for everyone else, but it’s really hard to tell if that was just a bad timing thing or something else. During the awards they didn’t announce my name for my age group to stand on the podium and get your beer glass. Having already seeing the results, I had to approach the announcer and informed him that I wasn’t called but it was too late as the women already did their photos. Luckily some of the ladies overheard it and insisted that we got back up there again, which was awesome and shows hope that fellow athletes don’t really care who you are … but it was super awkward because they had already started calling out the men, and as you can see in the photo of the podium, the ladies were grouped together and I was grouped with the men because I had to stand on the 5th place spot. I don’t know, it was really weird. When it was done and we were walking off the podium thing, a guy ran up to me and told me I didn’t belong, took a photo, and said he was going to post it. Where, I have no idea.

After it was all said and done, I could hear some folks talking about that I took the podium away from the 6th place woman, aka, a trans woman taking something away from a CIS woman. I was like, its 5th place, typical races don’t even have that as a podium let alone receiving a reward. It’s not worth getting all worked up about.

I was misgendered a lot, but that doesn’t really phase me too much anymore. I get that my voice makes it fairly obvious and for some reason people are more focused on what they hear over what they see right in front of them. Not much you can do; sure, you can correct them but the majority of the time it’s really not worth it.

Other than that, it was fine, things mostly popped up when I was walking around with my flag; looks, stares, and awkwardness. The other athletes didn’t really care beyond a couple misgendering me, but they’re focused on their race.

Again, a bit more than I usually have to deal with but it just shows how important it is to be there. You never know, there could be parents in the crowd with a kid that just came out to them and seeing another trans person there might help calm their fears or whatever. Or maybe there was a trans person in the crowd who has a passion for triathlon but hesitant to pursue it because there’s a lot of eyes on us in sports and seeing me might make them go out and try. You never know, I just hope being out there sparks change and encourages acceptance. That’s all that is important to me, results are always secondary.