Just as I’m sure he does on the streets of San Francisco, Ty, with his gold-tinged beard and baggy hoodie, fit right in on the shores of Lake San Antonio, a small lake in Central California surrounded by eroding hills that reminds the eye that lakes are really just big puddles. This puddle was the site of the Wildflower Triathlon a huge “festival triathlon” that draws upwards of 30,000 people each year to camp, race and cheer on family and friends. But Ty, despite his decidedly California demeanor, was at Wildflower for business. Ten days before, he had packed up our most precious cargo, bicycles, and trucked them across the country.

I thought little of this process, or Ty’s aptitude for it, as we ambled through the gigantic Wildflower transition area, fresh from a cold practice swim, to pick up our bikes. “I’d like to spin it out a bit, make sure everything is ok,” I told Emily and Nems, as we waited to have our pedals remounted. And I did want to test my bike out, but also, after five months of training, I was just anxious to get out on the course. Emily elected to take the shuttle as Nems and I pushed off up Lynch Hill, a steep climb out of the transition area that tests Wildflower cyclists immediately after the swim. The slow climb allowed thoughts of months of training, the early mornings, the teammates hand on your shoulder (either just to let you know they’re there or so they can stretch out a pesky muscle without falling over), the freezing early morning bike rides over icy roads to indoor spin class, the last second dashes to Prospect Park for Wednesday GTS from the new job that often threatened my training sessions and thoughts of the last time I had been in this place. I was decidedly happy, but also relieved, to be in California with my teammates, ready to race.

Halfway up the hill my legs began to tire, an after effect of a 6:30 am flight from JFK to SFO, followed by a 3 hour bus trip broken only by a hasty supermarket sweep at the Super Walmart in Gilroy, CA. Yes, that garlic capital of the world. I shifted to my easiest gear. A crunchy melange of sound displaced the expected smooth click of a changing gear, as if someone had simultaneously tossed several heavy coins into a bowl of change and violently opened a bottle of seltzer. I clipped out of my bike and peered down at the twisted pile of metal where my derailleur had been.

“Any chance it was like that when it went on the truck?” Ty asked the next afternoon as I stood with one of my coaches at K-Man Cyclery, a bike repair mainstay at Wildflower for over 20 years. “No,” my coach, Jay, and I replied. Our collective forensic inquiry had deduced that the derailleur was bent in transit and, when shifted into the easiest gear, caught the spokes of my rear wheel, which sucked the whole mess through the frame of my new bike, only recently named La Niña. La Niña had a nasty looking injury to her rear seat stay, the carbon cracked and the paint peeling and chipping, the frame bulged slightly to the outside. The derailleur hanger, a loop of steel, was in two parts, one attached to the mangled derailleur, the other to the rear axle. The sheer violence of the injury distracted briefly from the obvious consequence: this was not a bike that was going to race on Sunday.

This season of setbacks, much harder than the first in both fund raising and training, which followed our inaugural year, had also followed us to California. We were, of course, more prepared. As Jed aptly observed at the pre-race pasta party, “I think if that had happened last year, all five of us would have quit.” Many a moment that Saturday, as I sat in the triathlon expo talking with coaches and TNT staffers, imagining what I would ride and lamenting the situation, I contemplated the possibility that I would not be able to race, an exceedingly dark thought in stark contrast to a perfect, sunny California afternoon punctuated by the PA announcement of finisher-after-finisher in the long course race. But by 5:30 my coach, Jay, and I were back at K-Man’s watching, or more often listening to, Tim, a loquacious mechanic in jean shorts, set up my replacement bike (a red Frenchman named Lapierre.) Feeling intent on starting the weekend over, I eschewed the shuttle again and took Lapierre up Lynch Hill to the pasta party, taking particular satisfaction in spinning easily past the location of La Niña’s demise.

Back on two wheels and eating cold pasta, Rory, Jed’s brother and the Landsharks’ impetus, asked me about my goals for the race. “You know, I had a goal when I got on the plane, but now, I think I just want to feel good,” I told him, partly believing it myself. By the next morning, however, race day adrenalin pushed firmly back against these revised expectations. As I let the cold water slip into my wetsuit with Don, Nems, Jed and new Landshark Alex, my original goal had returned. I could do this race in under 3 hours. I was sure of it. I swam contentedly, taking several moments to enjoy the chill of the lake and the khaki mountains around it. Out of the water in 30 minutes, I stumbled into the heat of transition, struggling to pull off my wetsuit. Lapierre proved game in La Niña’s place, carrying me swiftly past the pastoral scenery outside the park and back.

As I racked the Frenchman, I contemplated a run that had almost beaten me the year before. The Wildflower Olympic run is a pain, climbing for the first 8 kilometers, only to give back all of the gains in a scant 2 kilometers. The hills at Wildflower are named: the aforementioned Lynch; a cruel grade on the Long Course, which forces even elite triathletes to walk, dubbed The Pit; and a 5 mile climb on the bike referred to as “Nasty Grade.” Strangely, there’s no name for the slog that is the back side of the Olympic run course so that’s what I’ll call it, “The Slog.” The Slog is a series of false summits hidden by repeated right turns. Every time its over, well, its not really over. A year ago, near the top of the Slog, I had nagging doubts that I would finish. I fought through them but not with ease.

I climbed to the top of the short stairs that start the run (one of many cruel jokes played on competitors). The navy and orange of the 2010 Landsharks T-Shirts dotted the small crowd. A cheer at my back faded slowly as I turned to the hills that roll along the lake before the Slog. By the time I started to climb, the sloshing in my stomach having receded, I felt relatively comfortable. I pushed steadily upwards. A few competitors ran past me, often later beaten back by the sunny, hot incline and forced to walk. I looked at my watch at the 5k mark. 2:34 total. I had run a 30 minute 5k. Not great. To hit 3 hours I would have to run the rest of the course, including the top of the Slog, in 26 minutes, a pace of 8:22/mile.

At a certain point in an endurance event, asking your body for more is not unlike pushing the gas pedal down on a golf cart with a governor. Sometimes it speeds up and sometimes you’ve already at the limit, but you don’t really know until you push. I pushed. Nothing happened. “This is triathlon. You are alone,” one of our coaches told us in practice several weeks before the race. But at the tail end of a race the loneliness cedes. Maybe its just the heat but you start to feel like everyone is working together. A total stranger grunted under his breath, “nice job,” as I edged past him on a short hill. I returned the favor 500 yards later as he found some strength and disappeared ahead of me. We pulled each other along the dusty path that marks the last climb and, before long, crossed the crest of the hill.

The crowds swelled here with shouts of “Go Team,” the rallying cry for Team In Training. I joined in. Turning to cheer a woman in a TNT jersey who was pushing her bike up Lynch Hill and then profanely exhorting myself (a bad habit I’ve developed in training this season.) I looked at my watch. 1km to go in 3:30. I knew this wasn’t possible. I’ve never run a sub-6:00 mile in my life. My quads were toast. But I picked up the pace.

The crowd urging people through the finishing chute sounded, faint but audible. As the hill started to flatten, marking the last 1/4 mile or so, my watch read 2:59:30. Maybe, just maybe, I told myself… until, I entered the chute to see the race clock turn to 3:30, marking my three hours on the course. I kicked into a sprint. The announcer called my name and, after a pause, provided the requisite shout out to Brooklyn. I crossed the line.