Today I did the same bike/swim/bike as last week, only I did it at the end of the day, to scoop the cheap swim. The only problem: it means I’m pushing against school pick-up time.  Next time, I might just pay the extra $2. Ahem.

I took 40 minutes to get there, just in time for the start at 1:30. That was great. Only if I have to be at the kids’ school at 3, to be safe I want to be out of the building by 2:15. Which meant change/swim/change was an event in and of itself; limbs akimbo, flailing into my bathing suit. I imagine I was a bit intimidating: the bright red chunk-style woman trying to shimmy into her bathingsuit, no longer giving a damn about propriety. I would have been scared, if I’d not been me.

As it was, some sort of “screw propriety, my kids are gonna die out there if I don’t get back” took over (adrenaline is very dramatic) and so I hustled myself through the shower and into the pool. Did laps. Heaved myself out of the pool, through the shower, played the “oh my god my locker isn’t going to open!’ game until it finally let go, and threw myself back into clothes.

I was on my bike at exactly 2:15. Yay!

On the way out, something in the locker room smelled like serious B.O., and having just biked pretty hard I wondered if that person was me. (Now, at home with my clothing, I don’t think it was.) 

I didn’t want to be stinky picking the kids up. Due to laundry circumstances, my cycling outfit was, uh, a hodgepodge of those sorts of clothes one saves for painting. Looking vaguely alarming is one thing, but looking AND smelling alarming felt like a larger commitment to crazy parenting than I was willing to make. 

So bike fast to get a change of clothes, padawan. For vanity already sundered in a locker-room shimmy.

Lucky me! Coming home takes me a lot less time than getting there – on the way, it’s uphill for 20 blocks, flat for 15, down for 4. I do get passed by snails, when I’m biking uphill. They couldn’t ticket me for not coming to a complete stop at a sign, because how could they tell?

Down reverses that and is supa-fly.

The homeward time savings meant I could bike home, shower in 5, dress in 5, and then walk to pick up the kids at school.

That makes it a triathlon, yeah? Bike, swim, walk; 11k, 500m, 1k. Yes. I’m going to register it. International Tinfoil Man Competition.