I Tri-ed it!

Hey Guys, I finally finished my sprint triathlon.

Despite my not-so-great health and the cloudy weather, I had a good time. I think Andy had a good time as well, despite the early hour. It didn't actually rain during the race and I am very thankful for that.

Pretty much everything went according to plan. Our alarm went off at 4:30am and we were out the door by 5:15. My wave was scheduled for a 7:30 start but was delayed until 7:50-ish.

Here is my training and gym buddy, Dana. She is super cute and a very dedicated partner. She arrived like twenty minutes before Andy and I did! Can you tell that it's still dark out? It's just after 6am in the photo. And yes, she is a Cougar.

Not a super exciting video, but it's something for those who couldn't be there. Yah, it was finally light out by then.

My wave consisted of women 29 years and younger. In the picture above to the left, we are waiting for our wave to start. We didn't have any time to warm up in the water. They said we would have a few minutes in between wave starts to warm up but they lie! They wouldn't let us go deeper than our waists! I was really hoping to get that time to calm my nerves. Surprisingly, I wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be. And we're off! The pic on the right is our mass start in the open water of Lake Washington. The swimming distance was a half mile, it took me 19 minutes to complete. Look, there I am coming out of the water and already pulling off my wetsuit. The baby blue swim cap suites me well, wouldn'tcha say? The picture on the right is also very attractive. I had some quail head goin' on. The funny look on my face is because my wet sports bra is making it very hard to get my shirt on.

The pictures from the bike start didn't turn out so well, oh well. Here they are anyway. In the first, I'm waving to the camera. The second is of my back, blowing by, so fast! (...not really) Keep in mind that the shorts I am wearing are for all three sports. So they are soaking wet right now and it's like 50-something degrees out. I was sooo cold. Dennis, can you imaging getting into the water with your biking shorts? Those chamois (pronounced /shami/, it's the butt pad) soak up a lot of water and the water continuously streams down your legs.

My bike time was 52 minutes covering 12 miles. 12 miles of wet hills, I might add. I was very conservative when flying down the super steep hills of Kirkland. The up hill climb was more gradual, still difficult but definitely not as scary as the possibility of hitting the concrete at 30+ miles and hour. So I went slow. A lot of people passed me here and I'm sure they had better times than I did. However, I still have all the skin that I started with and that's what is important. There was an ambulance at the bottom of one of the hills about 3/4ths through the course. I could see the EMT's trying to get a person on a stretcher. Later, I heard a lady wiped out pretty bad. That sight made me go even slower. Also, at the top of the first little hill, I saw a guy fall for no apparent reason (I'm thinking his chain fell off while switching gears). It was pretty funny--only because he got up right away. I fell off my bike last week and it really sucked. I feel for the guy.

I am so thankful that I had the abundance of training and practice that I did because when I got off the bike I didn't have rubbery legs. I had run the course earlier in the week, so I knew what was coming and I knew how to pace myself. My time was 23 minutes for 3 miles. I don't know who passed me during the bike but I'd like to think that I passed some of them on the run. I don't mean to toot my own horn...but I passed a lot of people during the run. Other than a muscle cramping in my shoulder blade, it was easy. Here I am running towards the finish line.

I did it! YAH! I've got my medal, a bottle of water and a big smile.

My overall time was 1 hour, 43 minutes.

P.S. I totally have a crush on the camera guy. ;)