My 1st Triathlon

Last week I competed in my 1st Triathlon. It was a sprint so I had to swim 300 meters, bike 12 miles, and then run a little over 2 miles.

Here are some of my thoughts:

1) 5:00am is WAY too early to get up and try to get motivated to race. I tried to go to bed earlier the night before, I think I finally fell asleep around 11:30pm. (That is early for me)

2) Triathletes are SERIOUSLY tough! I was constantly thinking "Holy cow look at the guns on that chick" "Dude that girl is freakin FIT" "Ummm That chick actually looks like a real DUDE" This triathlon is part of the Austin Tri Series so there were actual professional triathletes competing and they were STUDS.

3) The line for the port-o-potties before the race was a good 15 minute wait. Ha why does it take us ladies such a long time to pee?

4) The water that I had to swim in was ABSOLUTELY disgusting and smelled really really bad(like poo). It did NOT make me feel better when I saw that goats(YEAH REAL GOATS) were hanging out on the island in the middle of the lake. I never did find out why, but it did help explain the smell.

5) I now know why so many people warned me about the swim. It was CRAZY! Ladies were kicking me in the head and smacking me in the face. Every time I tried to take a breath I got splashed. It was hard to see where you were going and I had trouble sticking my face in that nasty water. If I wasn't as comfortable as I am in water it could have ended bad. If you are not a very confident swimmer this part of the race can be really frightening.

6) Getting out of the water and then having to run to the transition area(where your bike, shoes, and other things are all set up) was harder than I thought. I had bare feet and had to run through gravel, that was not fun.

7) I purposely took my time in the transition areas because there are so many rules and I didn't want to get DQ'd. Other ladies were psychos in the transition area and literally just grabbed their bike and took off BARE FOOTED and all.

8) The bike part of the race was by far my favorite and I was the best at this. I actually got 65th outta like 500 in the bike split. I had a great time and could have done better, but I wanted to save some energy for the run. It felt good passing ladies out on the road (knowing that soon they would get a chance to pass me back during the run)

9) Ah the run! I knew that this would be the hardest part for me. You see I have literally NO cartilage in my knees which means when I run my knee joint is bone on bone. Running hurts me no matter what. And guess what? The run hurt and it sucked. My average was 9 and 1/2 minutes (not great) But I made it! I did almost puke at one point, but that was because I took a huge gulp of what I thought was water, GUESS WHAT? It was not water. It was some high calorie high sugar disgusting syrup stuff. Ha makes me think of a Seinfeld episode)

10) I did not pass out at the finish line like I thought I would have. I actually felt really good. This makes me happy and sad. Happy because I feel like I trained well. Sad because I could have done better. Hopefully I'll do another race this summer and can't wait to try and improve my time.

I finished the race in 1 hour, 15 minutes, and some change. That's a good time and I was happy with it. It felt good to push my body. And I'm proud of myself. Here's some pics from race day.

Seriously NO ONE should get up before the sun.......EVER!!

Some of the ladies from my Lifetime group. The stud in the red helped me train. (She placed 7th overall) The lady in the pink hat also helped me out a lot.
That's me all finished with the swim. I'm smiling because I'm finally out of that nasty "poo" water.
Didn't even know that there was a photographer here, I was "in the zone" for sure.
Sporting my Help Haiti shirt and loving that I'm a half a mile from being DONE!