This past weekend, on Saturday, March 9, I completed my first triathlon. It was a mini-triathlon, but a tri nonetheless. I found out about only a few days prior, and since I'm crazy, I decided to go for it.
The tri had a pretty cool setup. It was a nice introduction to triathlons. This was all indoors- the swimming was done in laps in the pool, the biking was stationary and the running was on a treadmill. There were volunteers (or YMCA employees) standing all around to get times and watch the laps to make everything as official as possible.
I went in knowing I'd be fine at the running and biking, but I was really nervous about the swimming. I haven't gone swimming since the fourth of July last year. Yes. That exact date. And I hadn't swum laps in years. Not since the time in my elementary-school-years when Mom thought I might enjoy a swim team. (She was wrong.)
Registration was from 6-9am, but my heat time wasn't until 10:40, so I just sat around for a few hours waiting for my turn. But I didn't mind- it kind of relaxed me to be able to see how the tri would work- and how relaxed everything was. It wasn't intense.
My time finally rolled around and I went. I only did 6 laps (300 meters), and I swear I thought I was going to die. Die. I'm not even kidding. No exaggeration. I thought I was going to die. ..After the first lap! I still had 5 laps to go! By the time I got to the second half of the 6th lap, and my lane judge/timer girl was cheering me on, I'm pretty sure every time I took a breath and could hear her cheering me, a little piece of my soul died, and I told her off in my head. I know. That's bad.
I finally finished it and found out that however near death I thought I was, I still finished the 6 laps in a pretty impressive 7 and a half minutes. Seven minutes and thirty seconds. The absolute longest 7.5 minutes of my life so far.
Then, since transitions weren't being timed, I took a few minutes to sit in the locker room and regain full consciousness. About 7-8 minutes later, I found myself trying to get comfortable on a spinning bike. Oh my gosh, those things are so wildly uncomfortable! I did the 5 miles on the bike slower than normal, but I wasn't really trying to "win" anything.
Moved on to the quick mile run.
After I finished the mile run, I felt this strange sense of accomplishment. My first triathlon. I'm a triathlete! (Never thought I'd say that!)
My impeccable athleticism inspired Husband to go for a run later Saturday afternoon.
The rest of the weekend was spent watching FRIENDS, playing with Puppy, church, and ice cream :)
That actually sounds like a whole lot of fun! Not long enough to have to train hard, but still enough to be challenging. I did a canoe tri once... that was a lot of fun, but my butt and back were SO sore the next day. We canoed for about an hour and maximum speed. I was trying to pass people, of course.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Miss Athlete, you'll have to do that beer run thing w/ me on the beach in a few weeks!!! Whoop whoop.
ReplyDeleteI would worry that you were sick if you weren't trying to pass people! I'm definitely up for the beer run. But I haven't run in well over 2 weeks now, so I'll be slow!
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