Mother’s Day was a whirlwind of activity at my house, and it’s taken me a few days to recover and carve out some Holly-time to write about it.
Comparing a 5:00am wake up for a sprint triathlon to a 6:30am wake up for a 5K run is an apples to oranges exercise in futility. I’m still not sure if it is the camaraderie in the atmosphere or just all of the “stuff” that I need to remember, but I literally fly out of bed and get moving. In contrast, while I’ve ran several 5ks in the past year, I can’t think of one morning that I didn’t have pangs of regret when it was time to leave my cozy bed in my snug little house with my loved-more-than-anything family members and wish that my plan instead included another couple of hours of sleep followed by brunch in pajamas.
But Mother’s Day was a multi-sport day, which is increasingly preferable to a plain old running day, and I was out of the house by 5:30 and on my way. This was easy to do on the first two races – I simply didn’t sleep the nights before because I was too anxious. The biggest accomplishment of my entire day was realized at 5:00am when I realized that I actually slept the whole night without waking up to freak out about directions, gear, transition set up, etc. It’s funny how stressful and intimidating transitions can be at first, (or at least were for me) and then after doing a few of them realizing that all of the stuff fits into a small little bag and the formula isn’t exactly rocket science. Hopefully I will still feel this way in July.
My race itself was fine. I’m still a jumble of anemia, fatigue, etc., and I’ve been distracted from “moving” much lately by other elements in life (my family, my job, my house, etc.), so my real, honest-to-goodness goal was to have fun. My swim was alright but not stellar. I kept a nice steady pace that felt as good on the last length of the pool as it did on the first. T1 was quick and simple. My bike was surprising only in that I was more upset at being passed than I thought I would be. I took note of the women who passed me, and I know that they are all tri-regulars with several events on the near horizon, but it was still irksome. T2 was super easy and the run was short and uneventful, which is about as positive as I can make a run sound most of the time. Well, I take that back. The run included one out and back stretch, which was the friendliest span of race course I’ve ever experienced. Everyone was so cheerful. It would have been weird seeing so many smiles except I knew I was wearing one too. “Great job!” “You’re almost there!” “Good luck!” REALLY?!?! When was the last time you were in a race and the other competitors actually smiled at you and gave you friendly encouragement?
The best part of the event was that two very good friends of mine competed in their first triathlons. I hope that either (both?!) will be willing to share their experiences with everyone here. I love this picture of Rebecca. I was so happy to cheer for her and be there to celebrate her first triathlon.
She is a Mama Getting Moving for sure.
And here is a shot of the four of us – Janet, Me, Rebecca and Marcie.
My Girls on the Run team had a practice 5K on Monday afternoon in preparation for our race this weekend. Due to all of the rain that we had on Monday, I shortened the distance of each lap and increased the number of laps in order to keep them on pavement and to avoid potential injury from the muddy field. Just before practice, I decided to split the girls in half and send each half in opposite directions so that they too could look at other runners, could smile at them, and could give them encouragement. They were silly and hilarious, and it was awesome.
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