I can now officially call myself a Triathlete…well a “Sprint Triathlete” at least. Last weekend I participated in a sprint triathlon (in the rain!), which I counted as my July race. I was starting to get extremely bored of running and needed to take on a new challenge. I’ll always revert back to running because I find it so easy to do and mindless, but it was getting to the point where I had almost stopped enjoying it.
So that’s when I signed myself & Tim (more on that later) up for a local triathlon. It consisted of a 400 yard swim (16 laps in a normal sized pool), a 12 mile bike ride, and a 3 mile run. I was on swim team growing up and run on a regular basis, so I wasn’t worried about those two parts of the race…. it was the biking. Sure Tim and I will go on bike rides on the trail near our house, but I’ve never been a regular bike rider. The trail we do is about as flat as you can get, but the course wouldn’t be. And even though the bike portion of the race was only 12 miles, I would ride 14-16 miles on the flat trail to help make up for some of the elevation variation I’d encounter.
Fast forward a couple months…Tim breaks his right wrist. That means he was out of the race. We were both looking forward to doing this together. But his friend Matt (the one out in CO) gladly took his place. Matt has actually done this race before, so his insights on the race helped calm my nerves a bit. The one good thing about Tim breaking his wrist was the fact that I got to upgrade from his mountain bike to his nice road bike. Heck yeah!
So here I am before the race, getting the bike and my gear set up in the transition area.
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…
Off and away on the bike! The ground was super slick from the rain, which made me nervous.
Back from biking, and off to run three miles. The black thing around my left ankle was the timing chip. I felt like I was on house arrest wearing it. This was also the point where I really started to noticed the rain. It had made my shoes so heavy from being wet. My running time certainly wasn’t my best, but it certainly wasn’t my worst either.
And finishing! Soaking wet that is…
Matt had an awesome finish time of 1:17 (1 hour and 17 minutes), and I finished in 1:35—placing 5th in my age group. Not too shabby for a first-timer, right? My goal time was 1:40, so I was excited when I saw that I finished five minutes under that. And even though it rain pretty good during the entire race (which was actually nice because wasn’t hot then), I had a fun time doing it. I will definitely keep this on my race list for next summer. Maybe I’ll even be able to get down to 1:30…maybe.
What made this race even more awesome was the fact that not only did Tim come cheer me one like normal, but my Mom and Grandmas (who were in town that weekend for a bridal shower) were able to watch me race. Even Matt’s wife Ellen made me a sign and held it up as I went by during the bike portion. It was nice to have a little cheerleading section. Makes you want to do your best and come out strong. And I think I did 🙂
-m.
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