COMPETITIVE OR NOT?

I have always been competitive. In middle school I was asked to join the high school track team. I ran the mile and two mile for every track meet, and sometimes coach Velasquez threw in an 880 on top of that.
There were two senior girls who thought I should let them win since that was their last year of school and I was only in middle school.
But I was too competitive and I also thought if they wanted to win that they needed to work out harder to earn the win.
After all, I worked hard in practice, then ran the mile home, got my dog, and ran some more. Every day. So why should I let someone else win if they weren't working as hard as me?

After getting married and starting a family I did nothing athletic for about ten years. Then my neighbor saw me playing catch with my son and invited me to join a woman's softball team. I loved it. I loved the competitiveness of it all. I played on the woman's team every summer along with playing on a co-ed team. I did this for several years but a long distance move followed by a broken tailbone while rollerblading was the end of my softball career. I still miss it though and still have my old glove. (Just in case....).

After softball was five or six years of nothing. Well, we lived on a farm and the horses kept us too busy to even think of sports. Then about four years ago Randy and I started biking. We lived in Nevada and with the cold winters we pretty much only rode in the summer. At least that was the only time I rode. I loved those Nevada rides. Oh, some of them hurt pretty bad. We rode up some long long long steep hills. We rode along the base of the Sierras. That was beautiful country. We rode with wild horses running along the side of the road. I really miss those rides. Rolling hills in the country with little or no traffic. Beautiful farmland. Cattle, horses, dogs, acres of green pasture, that was the life. It's too bad it had to get so cold and wet in the winter.

Now we're here, in Hawaii. I'm trying to get into triathlons. I'm getting older and have had a lot of injuries over the last several years. My tailbone broken twice, broken ribs from a horseback accident, my moped accident, a fall off the ladder at work... it takes longer to heal as I get older. And the injuries seem to happen more often as I age.
At my age, almost 47, can I still be competitive or do I just settle for doing and finishing a race? Do I really have the time, strength and endurance to train hard enough to compete?
I guess my goal is just to make it through the Lavaman. I have a feeling that doing Lavaman will bring back the competitive nature that I've had for so many years, and make me want to work harder for the next race, but right now I just want to do the race. And finish with NO injuries.
However, after today's workout with the Wahine group, I don't even know if I can make it through Lavaman. We did an hour ride followed by a two mile run. I was dead. I was slow. I was embarrassed. I need to work harder. It's hard to be behind everyone else when I have such a competitive nature.
So my question is, do I try to compete, just try to complete the race, or just walk away?
For now I will keep training, try to train harder, try to enjoy the sport, even when it hurts, and try to figure out if I can still be competitive or if I am just doing this for fun. I guess either way, it should be fun, and that will be my goal. Have fun no matter what happens.