The Plants. My God, the Plants.

So my girlfriend railroaded me into entering a triathlon.

For almost two months I've been training myself into exhaustion for something that slovenly, out-of-shape people who haven't practiced a single hour will show up for with old mountain bikes and tennis shoes.

Went out yesterday to Pleasanton to take a bike ride and then actually swim in the lake where this thing is going to be next week. Very important for the aforementioned girlfriend, who, while a strong swimmer, has open water issues.

We swam out beyond the frenzied, screaming chop of the recreational area. The adult swimming lane spanned the horizon in a single, bleak line. I grabbed a pylon and stared at the twin ropes stretching ahead of me and disappearing over the curve of the horizon. It was simply a question of exactly where my heart would give out -- at just what point my faltering stroke stopped and my lungs filled with water until I slipped with a tiny ripple into the depths below.

I drew in a breath -- my last? -- lowered my head, stroked my arm forward -- and came face to face with SLIMY PLANTS. Right at stroke level. I mean to say that when you bring your extended arm down and in, you graze the tops of the SLIMY PLANTS. So if you have goggles, and if you swim with your head submerged and your face to the bottom, with correct Total Immersion form, you spend the whole time staring at MANY, MANY, MANY SLIMY PLANTS.

Lynne shrieked and shot out of the water. She has SERIOUS ISSUES with SLIMY PLANTS. After working for a year to perfect her crawl, she announced that she will be doing the breaststroke the whole way, keeping her body out of the water from the knees up.

As for me, the fear I face is not the fear I thought I would face. It's really not even the plants and the overall murk. Consider this: 1500 people have signed up for this race. 1,500 people, all of them running at the gun, surging from the beach, plunging in and swimming all at once, a kicking, stroking, elbowing, zig-zagging mass of humanity, stirring up the muck and the slime and the dead fish and the plants.

Many will urinate in terror.

Or worse.

And I haven't even mentioned the way the loose plant strands wrap around your legs and shoulders.