I told my wife I was shooting for 5:20 at Wildflower. Fishing for a compliment, I asked her for her prediction. "You're going to go 5:42," she said.

"No way!" I replied. "I'll swim it in a half-hour, and I think I can bike the course in three hours. Add 10 minutes for transitions and farting around, and then all I have to run is a 1:40. I can do that in my sleep."

"5:42. Don't forget to eat and drink. Remember to enjoy yourself. Let me know how it went."

I easily dismiss amateur prattle of disintered observers. Water off a duck's back. My wife, though, coaches triathletes, and she has an uncanny ability to predict finish times of her clients––even in ultras––to within minutes. Plus, she's done this course a couple of times, right around 4:40, plus or minus.

I don't happen to be one of her athletes. Still, she sees the work I do––or don't do, as the case may be––and I run with her on occasion. That's why my confidence in her ability to scrutinize my ability was shaken. How could she misread me by that amount?

So I went up there prepared to do something between 5:20 and 5:25, and my lack of training––especially running––notwithstanding, I was pretty jacked. I was a triathlete again.

It was fairly hot on Friday, but my friend Mark Montgomery, with whom I was camping (everybody camps at Wildflower) said, "Don't worry, it's supposed to cloud over tomorrow. It's going to cool off."

At daybreak on race morning Monty said from inside his sleeping bag, "Describe the clouds." I stuck my head outside the tent and noticed a smattering of other people whose heads were likewise poked out, looking upward. They'd heard the weather report too.

Monty is about as good as I am at competing in the heat, which is to say, clouds are our friends.

"Well, Mark, I see a contrail." That was it. Clear. Blue. And already heating up at 6AM. The weatherman was right about one thing, as it turned out. The temperature on race day was 5 degrees afield from the day before. Just in the other direction.

Not to worry. Besides, I hadn't done a triathlon is a dozen years, and I was busy enough just trying to remember all the stuff you've got to do to get yourself ready to start. I didn't want to come off the bike and go, "Oh, heck, I forgot my running shoes." I didn't have time to worry about the weather.

All the pre-race paraphernalia got handled, the pros went off, then the next wave, the next, and so on, and a half hour after the pro start it was time for middle-aged guys like me to go. I jumped in, got bumped a little in the first 100 yards, then found a nice comfortable set of feet to swim behind.

I was dead scared of the bike course, not because of the hills and the distance, but because I'd found that I'd been just a bit enthusiastic in my gear choice. I had a 39X23 on my 700c wheels, and I found that when I rode up the first hill the day before the race––and this hill is about 8% to 9% and is upwards of a mile long––I struggled. So although this fellow was swimming fairly slowly, I justified the pace by reminding myself of the hill that greets all of us almost immediately after doffing the wetsuit and clipping into the pedals.

But this was a different sort of thing. I've never swam this easily. Which I took to mean I'd never swam this slowly. I could've done stroke drills behind this guy. This was a bit of an issue, because I was already swimming slowly, having only spent six weeks in the pool. I thought, before the race, that if I really humped it, and got behind the fastest guy I could hang onto, I'd go 30 minutes. Now I was thinking it was going to be 35 or 36, and that is fully what I was expecting to see when I exited the water.

So I was shocked to see 31:20, especially because we had to swim through an unbelievable horde of 35-39ers and even quite a few of the 30-34 wave. My guy didn't do so bad. I never got the name of that masked man, but, so far so good thanks to him.

Everybody else was racing up the boat ramp to get across the chip mat and have their swim splits recorded, but I decided to hang around the water's edge, take off my wetsuit, go find my little pussyfoot slipper-things I'd hidden nearby (it was a long run out to where my bike was racked).

The first ten miles of the bike course are fairly hilly––especially mile-2, as explained above––and I was pretty happy with how it all went. I averaged right on 19mph, and as the terrain got flatter over the next 30 miles I improved on that a bit. I hit 40 miles in 2-hours exactly––which was the race plan––and got myself prepared for mile-42, where the climbing starts in earnest.

Again I wasn't sure how 39X23 was going to work on this hill. But it was just enough. I saw a lot of fellows I hadn't seen in 20 or 30 miles––guys who flew by me on the flats, perhaps unaware of what the back half of this course had in store for them. The last 14 miles of the Wildflower bike course are almost entirely up and down 7% grades. I knew that I could forget my 20mph average. But I'd expected that.

I came into T2 absolutely the freshest I've ever felt in a triathlon of this distance. I rode 2:59, which was just exactly what I'd intended to ride. I spent precisely 10 minutes over both my transitions, changing clothes, messing around, and I took off on the run 3:40 into the race. The entire race was going exactly as I'd planned, to the minute. So far so good. Phooey on my wife.

I had no expectation of feeling this good in the early part of the run. I ran the first mile in 8 minutes, then 7:45 for mile-2, and figured I could hold this for half the run. Then, if things were going my way, I'd try to negative split.

I'm a runner. I swim, and I ride, but in my heart and soul I'm a runner. I haven't been doing much running this year––well, actually in the last 10 years––but, hey, that's a detail. I'm a runner, and I can run seven-and-change with two broken legs. Phooey on my wife.

Mile 3––another 8 minute mile. Mile 4––9 minutes. Not a problem. There was a big hill in that mile. Mile 5––10 minutes. Cramps. Stop. Stretch. Eat a gel. Go again.

Mile 6––I'm now factoring in my rate of decline, adding up the remaining miles, looking at my watch. No. That can't be. There must be some mistake.

By mile 10 I'm suffering. I mean I haven't suffered like this in a long time. I'm really finding it hard to keep my sense of humor. I'm thinking to myself, "Self, how can I still be looking at uphills? Haven't we climbed all the hills? How can there be more hills?"

The mathematical certainty of it was strident. I realized that I'd really have to get my sense of humor back about this. There was only one thing that could keep the inevitable from happening, and that was for me to deliberately go slower. I certainly wasn't willing to do that.

I crossed the line and looked at my watch. 5:41:35.

This story is emblematic of my married life, and any man can, of course, relate. It is a metaphor. I do not mind it. I have grown to embrace the karmic twists of this world, and the part I play in them. My wife obviously knows what she's doing. Perhaps I'll try to remember that. Or perhaps not (to which any husband can, of course, relate).

All that aside, I had an absolute ball. It was basically a party I threw for myself, in which I welcomed myself back to the sport that I'd abandoned––as a competitor––for more than a decade. I had five hours, forty-one minutes and thirty-five seconds of time to rediscover for myself exactly why triathlon is greater than the sum of its three constituent parts.