His Flag Was Still There - A Rainy Sprint

 

Rose City Triathlon

 

Sept 12, 2009

Tyler, Texas Lake Tyler 

650 Yard Swim-14.5 Mile Bike-5K Run

A light rain began when we pulled into the parking lot.  It was still dark at the Rose City Triathlon race site, and we were some of the first participants to arrive.  While I was getting set up, getting body marked, and all that, the rain increased incrementally.  It did not look good for the home team.  Daylight ebbed damp and gloomy upon the scene but spirits would not be dampened.  This was a triathlon, and the others and I were ready, rain or shine.

Finally, we participants huddled at the swim start on top of the lake dam.  On a pole stuck in the ground atop the dam was an American flag waving bravely in the breeze.  I talked to a participant about my age, a genuinely nice man wearing a chain with a cross on his bare chest.  It was cold in the rain and breeze but the good conversation with my new friend kept it warm. Then the national anthem was played, and we winced into the rain and put hands to hearts, and watched that waving flag.  The wind seemed to pick up during the anthem, and the flag fluttering loudly in the wind and rain.  Then a low hum could be heard, louder, louder still.  The low hum turned into audible words of song as we gathered ourselves to join in singing the anthem too.  A swell of pride rose in my heart, and a mist came into my eyes, unnoticed in the rain.  Then came the verse, “Oh say does that does that star-spangled banner yet wave------,” and the wind gusted in response, making the flag flap violently and defiantly against the wind.   As we cheered and clapped our allegiance, I thought that after this opening, the event might be anticlimactic.  I was wrong.  There was more to come. 

The swim went fine, and the water was not that rough at all.  It was pouring rain as we exited the water and ran perhaps a hundred yards to our bikes in the transition area.

 

My cross-carrying friend was already there, smiling at me, wishing

me well.  The rain was coming down hard as I left on my bike.

It was not too bad at first, squinting into the rain to see where I was going then came the short hills.  They were steeper than I anticipated, and my speed got out there more than I felt safe with on the wet roads.  As I squeezed the brakes to slow down somewhat, nothing happened.  Squeezing harder, still not much was happening. I was flying down that hill in the rain with limited vision and essentially without brakes.  I would have never thought I would be glad for a hill to climb so I could slow down.  The next hills were taken very cautiously, and I kept riding the brakes to get whatever film might have been on the pad that made them ineffective when wet.  Needles to say, this was not one of my best bike legs in an event.  But I was just glad to be back safely to transition.  The run was sort of out in the open in the blowing rain.   Our running shoes squished loudly on the wet pavement.  At a turn, I saw someone limping badly.  It was my friend with the cross around his neck.   Stopping, to walk with him, I noticed a large tear in his cycling shorts.  He had taken a bad spill on his bike in the rain.  He showed me his hip and was a large, deep abrasion.  It looked almost like you could see the white of his hip bone.  He was in pain, but he urged me to go on, but he was hobbling so I wasn’t sure he could go much farther.  Still, he urged me on, and I agreed but I said I would be back.

 

 Surging on to finish, I quickly found an official and told of my injured friend.

We left to run back up the course to find him.  He was not hard to spot with that bad limp, but he told us he wanted finish this race.  So, we watched as my friend dug down for those last few hundred yards to hobble painfully in the pouring rain, to finish the course.  There would be no accolades, no loud announcer calling his name, only surety of being the person God had called him to be in all circumstances and seasons.   What else is there?  He made me proud. I was the lone spectator cheering as he hobbled across the finish, where he was helped away into an ambulance which took him away.  I thought of that Star-Spangled Banner we had sung a short time ago.  He had finished and in doing so, he had confirmed to himself and to me that his “flag was still there.”