I have not endured child labor or battled a ferocious disease like cancer, but finishing the Wildflower Triathlon Sunday was the hardest, most painful thing I have done. During the .9 mile swim I swam off course at least twice but saved energy by drafting other swimmers. The scenery along the 25 mile bike ride was beautiful and I struck up a casual acquaintance with a rider named Larry who passed me about 5 times. I was quicker than him on the uphills, but his extra heft made him faster on the downhills.

The run, however, was miserable. Legs of lead, stomach churning, everybody passing me. Every step of the 6.2 mile run was a mental battle to keep my body moving and not give up, which was the only thing I wanted to do. I expected the last three miles would be tough, but I was unprepared for 6.2 miles of agony.

To keep myself going I thought about my friend JM, who recently gave birth, and my honored teammate Meghan, who battled cancer. Surely what they went went through was much worse, I told myself. I compared my constant, consuming pain to how bad it would feel to know this was my last day on earth. My body answered immediately: this is still really hard.

I stopped many times to walk a few steps, but made my self restart because I knew if I rested too long I would not start running again. The wonderful cheering fans, mostly students from nearby Cal Poly, kept me moving. Walking up a hill I heard a man yell "Nobody has ever passed this chair walking! You can do it, start running!" I did - slowly - and stumbled on.

Somehow I managed to make it to the last mile of the race, a steep downhill. I caught a girl wearing a yellow Cal Berkeley jersey and we booked it all the way to the finish. (I'm on the right.) Gravity was on my side and I reassured myself by saying out loud "you can do it" and "almost there." I crossed the finish line and the clock said 4:11:42. Not bad, especially considering my wave started an hour and ten minutes into the race. My total time to cover 32 miles: 03:01:42, which is much faster than the 3:15:00 to 3:30:00 I predicted.

Back at camp my coach came over to ask me how I felt.
"Okay," I said. "The run was really tough."
"So what was your final time?"
"3:01."
"What?"
I opened my mouth and laughed. I'm a rock star, baby! (And so is my friend Amy, below right, who roped me into this mess.)

All those times I felt unable to keep running but somehow did, I think I figured it out. So many people kept me in their thoughts Sunday - I can tell from the number of calls, emails, and questions I got before and after the race - that you guys pushed me to the finish line. Thank you!!

My support crew, aka Hubby, was more awesome that you can imagine. He was there at every step, cooking me pasta dinners after swim practice, encouraging me to workout early in the morning hours before he wanted to wake up, re-arranging his weekend plans to fit in my team practices every Saturday. Now our roles of athlete and support crew have switched as Hubby is running the NYC Marathon in November!