My First Triathlon

I say my first because it will not be my LAST!  This was the funnest race I have ever done.  It is so much easier on the body to be switching sports and not just having my knees pounded to pieces.  Of course it took a lot of training to be able to switch sports and still do well in each one.  I felt confident going into the race and think I did pretty good!

I was so upset with the weather that morning, really what else it new?  It was raining and as I rode my bike down to Kimi’s to meet I was wet and freezing.  Luckily by the time the race started the rain had cleared up and it was PERFECT racing weather.  The only hang up was deciding until the last second whether to keep my jacket on or not.  Luckily Diane talked me into taking it off and I was very grateful on the run that I didn’t have to deal with a jacket around my waist.

(Note to self, have someone besides Brandon take pictures of the race next time so I can actually be in the pictures)

Here I am just after completing the 5K run portion of the race.  I started out with Rachel Farr, but she quickly got rid of me and raced ahead.  Kristi, Kimi, and I stuck together and we joked about how glad we only had 3 miles to run instead of 13!

And take your pick of great shots of me getting on my bike and out of the transition area.  The biking was SO fun.  I trained on my 15 year old mountain bike and a week before the race decided it just wouldn’t hold up.  I switched to Bryan’s 1 year old mountain bike and that went much better.  All my friends had road bikes and so they left me in the dust.  I was proud of my legs going around and around as fast as they could!  I caught up with Rachel Farr and rode with her a good portion of the biking and then I somehow got ahead of her.  My BFF Tiffany was on her back porch waiting for me to go past her house on the Legacy trail.  It was so exciting to wave and gave me the chills to know that someone was proud of me!  The only casualty I almost had was when a cat ran out in front of me, I slammed on my brakes and it skidded in front of me and I narrowly missed running over it’s tail.   I was getting tired at the end of the bike, but I just kept pedaling as hard as I could!

Oh can’t you see me swimming in there?  Ya neither can I.  I knew the swim was going to be the hardest and it WAS.  I was so out of breathe when I got into the pool area.  I couldn’t get my swim cap and goggles on right, but I didn’t want to waste time so off I went.  At the first 4 or so lane dividers I would wonder if I could hold my breathe long enough to go under.  I don’t even know what I was swimming half of the time.  It is definitely different when there are so many around you and you are trying to keep breathing and not drown!  I was surprised to pass my fast bike friends (except for Kristi) in the pool.  Around the last 3 laps I finally spotted Bryan and the boys in the cheering section.  That helped me keep on going and get out of the pool with a smile.  All of us that trained together ended up finished within 5-6 minutes of each other.  It was so great to give everyone a hug as they got out of the pool.

I placed 21 in my age group, but who really cares?  I thought it would take me an hour and 40 minutes to finish and I did it in an hour and 26 minutes!  Two more weeks and I would have been in an older age group and would have finished in a little higher ranking!

Such a fun time with great friends.  Hopefully someone got a picture of all of us and I can put that here instead.  It is amazing what one can do when we are TO”GATHER”.  I loved it and really can not wait to do another one!