The Sprint Triathlon

Sometimes I give into peer pressure. Ok, a lot of times I give into it. And one of those times was when my friend Krissa said "we should do a Triathlon". HA! No thanks. But then I sat and thought about it and thought it would be good motivation to continue on my weight loss journey & usually I enjoy the fitness events she pressures me to do, so I thought ok. Lets do it.
It helps that it was a "Sprint Triathlon" so it was only a 400 yard swim, 12 mile bike ride and 5K run.
On paper it doesn't sound that bad. It could have been a lot worse.
But doing all those things one right after the other is hard.
Like really really hard.
Probably the hardest fitness thing I've done in my entire life up to this point.

We started training for it months ago.
The running I knew would not be an issue since I had been running already on my own.
The biking and swimming were a different story. Especially since I didn't even own a bike and couldn't remember the last time I had ridden one. 

But I found a bike to borrow and we started practicing swimming.
Lets face it, as much as I might want to be a mermaid I am NOT a mermaid. Not even close.
Some people are born to be good swimmers and others are like me. Not even close. But I could do the 400 yards without dying so I figured that was good enough. And the biking wasn't at all pleasant but I could do it. 

The time passed really fast and finally it was Saturday, race day!
I was pretty nervous. Especially after getting there and seeing all these professional looking guys there who were sponsored and who knows how many other triathlons they had done. There were 241 people competing and only 97 of those were women.  They had fancy road bikes and I had a mountain bike with a grandma seat. They had expensive gear and clothing and we had matching fun shirts. 

Everything started about 7am. They had everyone line up by the pool according to what you thought your time would be for the swim. The first cone said 6 minutes the last cone said 12 minutes. The fastest I'd ever done it was 16 minutes. So I was in the back. Which I expected. No one was allowed to dive in for safety reasons I'm guessing so everyone just had to jump in. It was pretty entertaining to see these fancy athletes just jumping into the pool, some flopping into the pool. They started a person every 5 seconds or so. Good news, I didn't die! Better news, I beat my time! Funny news, a lifeguard was totally following me by the side of the pool so I must have looked like I was struggling. But I did it, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. 

Next came the bike. 12 miles is long. REALLY long. Especially after you've swam. If I ever do it again I want to use a road bike. I was peddling as fast and hard as I could and people on their road bikes were passing me up like it was nothing. So frustrating. But I did it and didn't cheat and quit after only 2 laps which I totally could have done without anyone knowing. 

Finally done, and I got off and my legs felt like jello. But it was time to run. Strangely enough this was the part I was looking forward to. Running I can handle. Even after biking and swimming. I'm not saying it was easy, I'm just saying I was so happy to be off that bike I would have run a marathon at that point. 

And then it was over.
I didn't do great.
I didn't get the time I thought I would.
I didn't beat the people I thought I would. 

BUT

I didn't quit.
I didn't cheat. 

I didn't die. 

If you are curious on my stats they are embarrassingly as followed- 

Overall 233 of 241

Female 92 of 97

Total time 2:10:24 

I'm happy its over. And I'm happy everyone got a participation medal after crossing the finish line b/c Preston told me to win a trophy.
I was going to tell him that it was a medal for winning, but then I realized it would be better to teach him that you don't always win and that I tried my best and worked hard and still did good even if I didn't win.

Now time to train for the half marathon in February!