The Triathlon

My sister and I had planned almost all year to do a triathlon.  She had done one sprint distance tri a couple years prior and I had never done a triathlon at all.  Our 4 brothers have all done at least one Ironman so we figured that since we have the same DNA as them, we could for sure do an Olympic distance tri.

Olympic distance= 1500 meter swim, 40 bike, 10k run

All summer I went to Lake Tahoe to swim.  Never once did I dip a toe in a lane of a pool.  I'm a terrible swimmer but at least I was going to be used to swimming in cold, deep water.  Only difference is, our race would in the ocean.

The ocean freaks me out.  Big time.  It starts with the fact that I was once stung by a sting-ray on a surfing trip in Ecuador.  But also, the ocean tastes nasty, seaweed grosses me out, and there are people that have literally had their arms chewed off by sea life.  Why did I agree to this??

But I pushed that to the back of my mind and swam, biked, and ran all summer.  And let me also clarify that--I ran on a treadmill and biked in a spin class all summer.  How else can I get in a workout without using the kids club at the gym?

Shannon and I drove to the ocean to check out the site of our swim the night before.  Oh, the jitters that were going through my stomach right then.

The morning of, setting up our gear in the transition:

Ready to roll!  Our last pic before we headed to the starting line.

And we did it!

This race was so. much. fun!!!!  Shannon and I are totally hooked and planning our next race already.

A couple lessons learned:  Seawater is just as nasty as I expected it to be.  I had to stop swimming so I could dry heave a couple of times.  So absolutely disgusting.  I barf a little bit just thinking about it.  The bike was so fun.  Especially since it was on a course that overlooked the ocean for most of it.  And even though I didn't get to ride outside much (or at all) I was really happy with the outcome.  And final observation:  I am a really slow dresser and my transitions were awful.  I guess my mom wasn't just irritated when she would always get mad at me for being so slow during dance competitions when I was a kid.  Huh.  Kinda silly to spend all summer running/biking/swimming and kill my time putting my shoes on.  Who knew?