The Triathlon

Since I KNOW you all want to hear a play-by-play about me and the triathlon, here it is.

Saturday morning I was awakened at 12:30am by a little boy who needed to go potty. This is good. I'm glad that he can identify when he needs to go and that even in the middle of the night, he can clearly state "mommy, I need to go potty". But I really just wanted to sleep. So I got Drue to handle the potty. I got up again at 5:10am with a crying baby who just wanted to be held. But I just wanted to sleep. So I brought him into bed with me, and I laid awake for the next 45 minutes thinking about all the stuff I needed to do before I left. The alarm went off, I got up with the kiddos and thank heaven for Sesame Street!

Cut to the pre-race meeting. It was not in the instructions that we needed to place our bikes BEFORE the meeting. That means I missed the meeting because I was 3 miles up the road finding where to put my bike. By the time I made it back, the meeting was over and I had to ask a fellow Cooper YMCA-er what they said in the meeting. Essentially, nothing.

The race.

I was in the 7th group to go. Swimming is first and I skunked them all. Seriously. Swimming is my strong point though, and everyone has them so I don't feel like I'm bragging. I laped all the other swimmers at least twice. That was fun:)

After the swim was The Run. Swim-Run is not the normal series of events for a triathlon, it is usually Swim-Bike, but I was okay with the run being in the middle. It's my most difficult event so it was nice to get it over and done with just a little ahead of the ladies in my heat even though 3 of them passed me at mile 2-ish. The thing that slowed me down during the run wasn't my inability to run fast. I wasn't really all that tired. It was the two little boys, obviously brothers, who seemed to have gotten VERY behind and separated from their age-group pack. So, I ran with the little guys. They were great and such troopers. Their dad seemed relieved when I ran with them to him at about mile 1.5- but they were really cute kids. The rest of the run, all I did was get passed and not by people from my heat either! I was passed by at least 3 people from the heat after me.

But that's okay because I passed them in the bike.

The Bike.

I was actually looking forward to this because I knew I had a chance to make up lost time from The Run. And I did.

The course was a mile loop repeated 10 times. Half a mile down hill, half a mile up. The half uphill was of course hard. But it was crazy hard for me.

Why?

Weeeeel, my bike decided I didn't really need any gear controls anymore after the first 1/2 mile. SO what that means is I did 10 miles in 1 gear- the downhill race gear. I was essentially WALKING up the hill on my bike for 10 laps! I tried making up for lost time during the turns and downhill slope but it was so exhausting to climb that monster hill again!!!

I had a great music mix going for the run and the bike and on the last lap the song changed to Muse- This is The End. Seriously. It was great music to end to.

After I pulled into the finish area, I couldn't believe I had done it. I had no idea what my time was but I knew I was proud of myself. I was also not prepared for how emotional I got. This was a huge thing for me- I've never felt such a surge of gratitude to my body that it was able to go the distance and race so hard. I can honestly say I have no regrets about this race. I did everything I wanted to do and worked my tail off the get there.

And, of course, it paid off.

In my division, I placed second and in the Women's over-all I placed 2nd with a time of 1hr. 35 minutes and change.

Which means I came home with a medal. That was amazing.