Triathlon: "If I am meant to win, everybody else will drown."

I wish I had some impressive story about why I skipped this year’s Over The Mountain triathlon.
I wish I could say I’d injured myself just days before the 37-mile swim/bike/run while skydiving/mountain climbing/scuba diving, but I actually didn’t get hurt doing those things.
I was reaching for a towel in the shower. Yeah. I pulled a muscle in my back while standing in my bathtub, twisting around a wall to pick up a baby blue towel.
We can laugh about it now, but at the time it would have hurt way too much to breathe that deeply.
No, seriously, I was hurting badly enough at one point that morning I looked around for something to bite down on. Did I bite a bullet? Heroically snap off the shaft of an arrow sticking in me to chomp on?
Nope.
As a true journalist I reached for my trusty ink pen, now laced with chew marks.
At work Jeff hooked me up with some over-the-counter snackie-poos that made the pain more manageable as it faded during the day.
But I didn’t think I needed to compete in an event that would tear me up even on a good day, so I decided to volunteer.
I’ve heard it said that everyone who competes in such events should help out every once in a while – give back a little. And get the t-shirt without having to pay the event fee.
I had a great time watching everyone else hurt. Maybe it’s just that I’m ethnic-German, coming from the culture that developed the specific word, die Schadenfreude, to describe one’s joy at watching someone else suffer.
But seriously, after having other folks slice oranges for me all these years it seemed appropriate to repay the favor, also untangling extension cords, preparing drinks (how much gin goes into this Gatorade? Just kidding), and sorting bags of wet cloths and flamingo-covered towels from the water stage of the event.
How many bags of wet Speedos or whatever can there be?
I also got to see some neat folks I know, including landlady Mrs. Harris and her clan.
Her granddaughter, Blakely, who’s here on a visit from her folk’s mission work in Thailand, was the first local lady across the line, so we got to interview her and I got to chat some with Mrs. Harris.
I wish my relationship with my ex-significant other was as good as with my ex-landlady.
All in all, I found a good way to test the triathlon waters and learned a little about how races work.
Now I’m scoping out other races I can pencil in on my calendar. I’m not too life or death competitive at this point.
Just as my high school football team took the fated, relaxed, East Asian-type spiritual approach to the game (if we will get our butts kicked, we will get our butts kicked), I take a similar slant on starting out in competition.
If I am meant to win, everybody else will drown.