14.06

My first triathlon was a success! It was so much fun, and I can't wait to sign up for another. The distances were just right for me - 425 yard swim, 11.2 mile bike, & 2.6 mile run. Okay, truth be told, a .6 run would have been FABULOUS, but I went in to this knowing that I'm not a strong runner and really have made only slight progress between hating running and now mostly just disliking it. Well... going back a few posts, it is the hating jogging that I feel, and after that swim and bike, jogging was the ONLY option aside from walking, which I did some of here and there too. Actually, I was sort of trying to pace myself with another woman and used her to figure out whether or not my jog was faster than my speed walk. It was, but only marginally. But I'm all over the place....

Saturday afternoon I went to pick up my race packet and attend a meeting to hear all of the rules, get advice, and ask questions. It was helpful to be able to drive the course and see exactly where everything would be happening. Plus, I was super lucky because John and Mary Ellen were driving out at the same time so I was able to follow them and get insights from Mary Ellen who did the event last year, AND Ron, Dee Dee, Kayla and Janet were all there to attend the meeting with me with good humor and smiling faces. John and Mary Ellen invited me to ride with them in the morning, so Saturday night I took my bike over to get it in their van.
At 5:15 Sunday morning they pulled into my driveway, and we were off to the triathlon!

It was about an hour before the race was to start when we got there, and we were able to get a great bike rack on the outside of the transition area to set up all of our stuff. Here's a picture I took as I was starting to unload everything -

Janet and I went to get our timers (they have an official name, but I've totally forgotten what it was... basically a velcro anklet with a one-inch square box attached) and our numbers marked. During the run everyone has a visible number attached to their front, and during the bike there is a number on the front of the helmet as well as on the bike itself, but during the swim everything is left to the sharpie tatoos on both arms and the front of both thighs. Finally my age was written on the back of my right calf. Ugh. The crooked photo is Janet laughing about that while taking my picture.

Finally we were all corralled into to the pool area for the national anthem and the swim began. I was in the second wave of swimmers, which was awesome because I was able to just watch as the first wave took off. During my swim, there were at points four or five of us competing for space and sort of created a traffic jam. It was annoying, because we obviously kept slowing down, and I got kicked in the face by a guy trying to dolphin his way out of the pack. The worst part was that I wasn't aggressive at all about fighting for a spot and will definitely need to get over that next time. All in all I was really happy with how I felt coming out of the pool, got a really nice apology from another guy in the transition area, and got ready for the bike. I wasn't sure if I was going to change into bike shorts or just throw running shorts on over my suit, but I decided that since this was my first triathlon and I wasn't going to be good at the transitions anyway to just go for it. After one loop on the bike, I was so glad that I did! The bike was fun - I was delighted to see Meryl was there cheering for me in addition to Mary Ellen, Amy and Steve, and since we did three tight loops, I was able to pass the others and see how everyone was doing. Transition off the bike and into my running shorts and shoes was super easy, but honestly, that is when everything first got hard. I thought I was prepared for how my legs would feel, but instead of feeling all noodley, my quads were all wishy washy and my calves were super tight! Who knew?! Forget having a hard time running - I could barely walk! I wish the run was first and I could get it out of the way before hopping in the pool. So my run was more of a pathetic walk, jog, scamper, hobble... I don't know... I haven't seen any of the official photos yet. As I said to Meryl when I passed her, my positive self-talk was all used up by that point and I was not being a very good Girl on the Run. Thank goodness it wasn't any longer! The best part of the run was finishing it and seeing Jamie, Arianna, and Jonah as I was on my way to join the group.

I couldn't believe that they were there! How lucky am I to have such great friends?!

Finally, here's a shot of the five of us all together!

The times have been posted, and I am happy to report that I have PLENTY of room for improvement for next year. I was fourth out of eight for my age group and ended up with an 8:09 swim followed by 2:15 T1 (yes, putting bike shorts on wet legs did cost me there), 34:35 on the bike, 1:38 for T2, and 25:55 on the run for a total of 1:12:30.

Thanks again to everyone for all of the encouragement!!