MTS Conference 2023 by Ryan Chaudoin

On the evening before MTS, UCSB was blanketed in a strange sense of quiet. The sun, shaking off the clouds that had strangled it for months prior, lay just above the horizon, its reflection blazing a line of fire across the calm ocean. It illuminated the lagoon, which was devoid of life save from the ducks floating serenely on its still surface. A few students could be found on various corners of campus, reveling in the bucolic post-final air. As the sun’s last light died, a group of students stepped out of a dining hall, breathing in the cool dusk air. The quiet twilight was a final moment of sanity before the events of the weekend unfolded.

“Bing and James gave you their locations? How many people’s locations do you have?” I demanded of Derrick.

“Not as many as me” Donovan boasted, with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“I’ll give Donovan and Ryan my location if Donovan can find a way for Ryan to get ice cream,” Bing proclaimed.

“I won’t need that next year,” I said, lip-biting aggressively at Derrick and Donovan. Donovan contorted his face into an awful imitation of one of those gigachad memes.

As the twilight dwindled, so did our conversation, until Derrick and I were left chatting as we biked back to our dorms. 

“See you tomorrow at 4 AM” Derrick laughed, turning to his dorm. I scoffed; I had a few races under my belt, so I was no stranger to early mornings. Plus, my roommates were gone, finals were over, and I had spring break to look forward to. How hard could it be to fall asleep?

My roommates are gone, finals are over, and I have spring break to look forward to. How hard can it be to fall asleep? I thought, popping a melatonin and flopping into bed at 9 PM.

My roommates are gone, finals are over, and I have spring break to look forward to. How hard can it be to fall asleep? I thought, checking my watch at 10 PM after laying wide awake for an hour.

My roommates are gone, finals are over, and I have spring break to look forward to. How hard can it be to fall asleep? I thought, trying to get comfortable and feeling no closer to sleep at 11 PM.

My roommates are gone, finals are over, and I have spring break to look forward to. How can it be this hard to fall asleep? I thought, punching my pillow into a more comfortable shape at midnight.

Well shit, I thought at 1 AM, beating my pillow against the wall.

90 minutes of sleep is still pretty good, I thought at 2:30 as I moved my blankets and pillow to the floor of my room and slept there.

What the hell was that? I thought as my alarm beeped, rousing me up from an uncomfortably sensual dream about a non-bald Donovan. I shook my head and scrambled to get ready. I stuck an Ortega breakfast burrito in the microwave and threw whatever I had been too lazy to pack the previous night into a duffel bag. Five minutes before we were supposed to be meeting at the rec cen parking lot, I stumbled out of my room, clutching a suspiciously sticky and still unsettling cold burrito in my mouth, and tripping over my bags. I wobbled all the way to the rec cen, teetering like a car dealership tube man in a hurricane. 

Arriving at the rec cen, I was pleased to find that I was on time enough not to have been left behind. In fact, I was so close to being on time that I didn’t even receive panicked phone calls from Bing or Derrick.

The drive to the race felt like a dream, in that I was only half awake for it. Shout out to Thea for getting us to the race in one piece, since I think I would have fallen asleep behind the wheel if I had been the one driving. 

The race arrival and setup were fairly standard, which was actually not very standard. I suppose this just goes to show that the mean of a distribution can be misleading since a distribution can be such that the mean value has no chance of happening. Fortunately, in this case, we landed on the seemingly 0% chance that nothing went super wrong at the last minute.

Something went a little too right though. For the week leading up to the race, rumor had had it that the swim was going to be canceled. It was not.

I am not prepared for this, I thought as I stepped into Lake Lopez. I am not the greatest swimmer, and I had spent the week mostly preparing for a run/bike/run. As I waded into the lake, the water seeped into my wetsuit through the zipper on my back. I braced myself, and fully submerged, then pulled out instantly out of revulsion. While submerged, the color of the water was a little too similar to the water in my toilet that morning after my body rid itself of the remains of my breakfast burrito.

Slowly, the water filled with the athletes in the collegiate men’s wave, and we all made our way to the in-water start line. In-water starts are great since they make you so cold that your brain forgets to work and you don’t have the capacity for pre-race nerves. As the crack of the starting gun sounded and the water immediately transformed into a churning froth of limbs and aggression, the pummeling from all sides felt like the soft tap of fluffy pillows to my numb body. That was until someone kicked me in the face and knocked my goggles off. I spluttered, pulling them back on, and started fighting my way through the watery warzone.

I better never find out these guys' identities, I fumed as the swimmer to my right started swimming on top of me for what seemed like the fiftieth time. However, it was at least comforting to feel like I wasn’t completely alone as I swam through the empty space between buoys, far from transition and spectators. The guy on my right started speeding up (or maybe I was just slowing down), and I increased my effort to match him. However, he kept going, and as he pulled up next to me, I caught a glimpse of large, aviator-esque goggles that seemed like they would have been more at home on an airplane than in the water. Of course, I would recognize these goggles anywhere, and I wasn’t about to let Luke drop me, so I redoubled my efforts and stuck on his tail. 

I found out after the race that there was some confusion with the course, and people ended up swimming wildly different distances. However, I didn’t realize anything was amiss during the race, as I just turned my brain off and clung to Luke. I’m told we did the longer route, which makes me feel better about the fact that the front pack swam times that were about half of mine.

After dragging me through most of the swim, Luke picked up the pace as we neared the marina and I couldn’t hang on. I muscled through the last 150, feeling like a napkin that had been drowned in a lake and hit by a truck. My feet found the rough concrete of the boat ramp and I stood, spitting drops of muddy water from my revolted mouth. As I ripped my cap off, the roar of the onlookers assaulted my ears; simultaneously, the sun, an orb of pure white surrounded by a fiery red halo, blinded me as I took off my goggles. My eyes cleared, and I realized I was actually just looking at Donovan, who stood beside Paxton in the crowd of spectators. Encouraged by their cheers and Paxton’s luscious hair, I stumbled into transition, ripping my wetsuit off in record speed and pulling on my helmet. James arrived moments later and I tried to offer words of encouragement, but the only sound I could muster was a raw gurgle. I pulled on my shoes, grabbed my bike, and ran, joining Sean and Luke. We dodged and weaved through the chaos and carnage of the veritable warzone that was transition, eventually fighting our way to the mount line.

The first six miles of the bike passed in a haze as my brain and body tried to shake off the chill from the swim. My quads were frozen, my fingers numb, and my mouth dry. I ripped open a Gu and succeeded only in gluing my mouth shut.

As I neared the first U-turn, I started to see the leaders racing back towards me. Not long after, I started seeing people I knew. Daniel, Henry, Connor, Matt, Nathan, Derrick… Derrick? Shouldn't there be a few more people in that mix somewhere? As I reached the U-turn and was still yet to see several of our fastest athletes, I became concerned. 

Who’s missing? I pondered, but no sooner had this thought crossed my mind than I saw Taylor on the side of the road fiddling with his gears. Still, several people seemed to be missing.

But there was no time to worry, Derrick was irritatingly far but tantalizingly close and I had one goal: to catch him.

The bike flew by, and soon I was anticipating the run leg as I sprinted back toward transition. Still, a nagging feeling of confusion gripped me. There should definitely be more UCSB people ahead of me, I pondered. Logan hadn’t passed me yet. Had he died on the swim? 

My questions were shortly answered, as I saw a familiar blue tri kit, sleek aero helmet, and enormous pair of quads on the side of the road fiddling with a flat tire.

Clarification: the quads themselves were not the things fiddling with the tire, but I was so enamored with them that I couldn’t look at anything else. At least Logan had made it through the swim, a flat tire was probably the worst thing that could happen to him at this point…

Shortly thereafter, I arrived back at the transition area.

“How are you feeling Ryan?” I heard my dad yell at me as I pulled my running shoes on. It sounded like he was talking from the end of a very long tunnel.

“Bleeurpghfth” was all I could manage.

After hitting an alleged heart rate of 218 during the second Stanford run, I figured the best approach for this leg would be to take it easy at the start and settle in before pushing too much. Additionally, after an IT band injury and very limited running for most of the quarter, it seemed like a good plan to pace conservatively. As long as Derrick didn’t gain on me at the start, I was pretty confident that I could catch him during the second half of the run. So I forced myself to assume a comfortable pace. As I started approaching the first U-turn, I saw the succulent face of Derrick Chan heading back towards me, red with exhaustion like a sweet interior of a watermelon, if watermelons got exhausted. He was less than a minute ahead of me.  However, by the time I got to the second U-turn, I realized I had gotten too comfortable: Derrick was gaining on me, and my heart rate was certainly under control, it had dropped below even my tempo heart rate. It was go-time.

I negative split as I had never negative split before (mostly because of how slowly I went for the first three miles). I caught Derrick with a mile left and tried to turn on the heat. However, the thermostat must have been broken, because he was hanging on annoyingly well. As the finish drew nearer, I became increasingly concerned. I’ve been notoriously bad at kicking in the past, and I knew my only chance to beat Derrick was to tire him out with a decent amount of distance left. However, my run fitness was at an all-time low and when we rounded the final corner, still together, Derrick pulled out a kick that I just couldn’t match. He beat me by five seconds in a two-and-a-half-hour race. 

Allegedly, Derrick and I were in the top seven from UCSB. However, something about that seemed off. Then I realized that like half the team was sick, or injured or had some kind of disaster during the race. Maybe the reason nothing went wrong the morning of was because things went wrong for people way beforehand. But maybe things going wrong is just an occupational hazard of being a triathlete. Maybe it’s just an occupational hazard of being a person who’s alive. Who’s to say? However, seeing my teammates push through injuries and setbacks, and whatever is thrown their way has been a huge inspiration to me. I guess the nice thing about being insane enough to do something as difficult as a triathlon is that it really demonstrates the resilience of the human spirit. This team, and triathletes in general, are crazy kick ass. You all inspire me to be a better person, and I love you all for it.

-Ryan Chaudoin