First Triathlon In The Books..2nd to Follow!

Well yesterday was one to go down in the books....I completed my first full outdoor triathlon. I'm so proud of me and exstatic that I pushed myself to do this. I wasn't going for time...I was just working on completion. In the end that proved to be the right plan. A friend and I decided to complete this tri together and that was a pretty good idea. Now since we experienced one, I know I am feeling a bit better about the next one...(in 5 weeks!!!)

Friday July 10th

We left Fargo and made the drive to Grand Forks, ND to compete in the Prairie Rose Games Triathlon. This was a nice 1st tri for distance and $$. The next one isn't so nice on the pocketbook. Oh well. Once we made it to Grand Forks we headed out to Larimoure Damn to check it out and see the course. I figured this would put my anxiety at ease...WRONG....they had NOTHING set up, and it took the girl at the desk forever to find a really crappy map. So instead of thinking about it we headed back to GF and to Bonzer's to eat. I got a Casear..it did NOT taste well AT ALL. I didn't want to make a stink, until I saw my $8 bill for it..so I said something and the girl was nice and took it off my tab. My budget is still intact now. We went back to Stacy's aunt's house and watched the Tour de France stage 7. It was nice to have a cable company that had Versus. I also found that Lance climbing the Pyrennes to be a motivator the next day when I climbed a ND hill...it may sound lame..but that was a killer hill.

The morning of the tri my alarm sounded at 4:45am...ugh..but I was ready to get this tri hammered out. So I ate a half of a banana and a piece of peanut butter toast. I also had my Reliv shake. I got dressed and packed up. Woke Travis up to help us out and we were off.

When we got there we went to check in. I was 2nd, hence 002 for my body marking, and Stacy was 003. I wished I would have waited for my favorite #7 and I could have been 007 but now I know for next time..he he. We then set up our transition station, waited, had some GU, waited, filled a buck (with bugs and algae) to wash our feet during T1, waited, and then finally got some rules and before we knew it they were saying 10, 9, 8.....GO!!!

We started walking into the water and when it hit above my waste I went for it and started to swim...OMG..not a good thing...the temp wasn't much different than morning outdoor swim, but a pool does not have algae, weeds(HATE weeds), and you can see thru the water. This was so freaky. I began to breathe funny and freak out a bit..but I kept thinking "I can't give up or anything..I've been waiting for this." So I switched from freestyle to breast stroke and told myself, "it's just a casual swim across a pretty lake..it's all good..breathe slowly..deep breathes.." Then I calmed down..it helped I was swimming by my friend. Then she started to feel like I had been feeling..but she flipped onto her back and I told her we could stay together and it would all be good. So we did and we did the swim in 31 minutes. It was a bit longer than we both had wanted to finish it in, but we didn't drown...sweet.

The step was to transition to the bike. I did that rather quickly. I was pretty impressed with myself. Then we had to climb a really big hill with not much room to start up it. Once at the top I was struggling to breathe..I still hadn't caught my breathe from the swim. I went pretty slow for the first few miles of the ride....like 11 mph..at one point we were going down a hill at 35 mph..that was awesome..such a rush. We made it back from the bike..saw one girl fall on the turn around..she was ok..but that was hard for me to see..I don't do well witnessing crashes. We completed the ride, 12 miles in 52 minutes.

Transition 2 from bike to run went super quick. Racked the bike..took off the helmet , thru on the visor, and put on my Brooks Adrenalines...and off we went.UP THE HILL...AGAIN!! I hate that hill and the other hill. We were able to do the run in 35 minutes..which was pretty impressive for me and a run..after doing a swim and a bike. Must have been the adrenaline pumping. We only walked a couple times..mostly at the start when I was trying to catch my breathe...the good news is I had NO knee pain AT ALL.

Overall I finished in 2 hours 3 minutes...and placed 2nd in my age division..can we say sweet. So well we were on our run or maybe it was the bike..we decided we were going to sign up for the Detroit Lakes Triathlon on August 15th.