..and tri again....

Once I got on my bike, things were great. I cruised along a little faster than my pace speed and thought I was doing pretty well. That is.......
I thought I was doing well until the ten year old on a pink bike with streamers flew past me. Nothing is as disheartening as eating the dust of a little kid who is just tooling along chatting to her 9 year old friend. (They had matching helmets too… ) So I come up to the bike dismount, stop my bike, and **flash!** Ben takes a picture of me in this inglorious position instead of a speedy action shot. Oh well. He cheers me on as I run my bike in, drop it off, and change my helmet for my running cap. (My tips sheet actually reminds you that you don’t need your helmet for the run!) On the run I start out doing pretty well, but at about half a mile in, my lungs remind me that I am soooo not in shape. My legs are cheering “Go! Go!” So most of my race involves wars between the two areas. I’ll feel like I’m dying so I slow to a walk, but within seconds my legs start slowly jogging again without asking by brain for permission.. Torture!

The best point in the run was when I saw the aid station. As I ran up and took a Gatorade, I told the guy “OOOh! Just what I need! An excuse to walk!!” Once I finished the drink, (it had to have been a serving size.. It was that tiny) I started my trudge again. Soon, I was coming up to the finish line and I heard someone behind me yelling.. "Come on!!! Pore it on baby!” So I did. I found a last little bit of reserve and sprinted to the end, giving high – 5s along the way. It’s only later that I realized it was two ladies finishing together behind me who were encouraging each other. Any way, I finished. The fam (excluding John who had to go prep a turkey) and I went out to breakfast, and I had a great hot chocolate and a big old fattening waffle. The rest of my day was full of sleeping and eating. MMM was it good.

Tri ..

Wow! What a crazy, crazy day. I finished my first triathlon today, and it went pretty well. I did about how I thought I would. My bike was spot on, my swim was.. interesting… and my run was horrid.
There were 16 waves of women who were racing. The first one was the “elites.” There was an Olympic silver medalist in that one. The next was the “survivors,” which included women who had survived or were diagnosed with cancer; third came the family wave. There were a large number of women who were racing with their little girls. Other than that we were grouped by age. I was in the wave just preceding the “old broads,” wave number 15.
The day started at 4 am for me, after a night of rotten sleep. I just lay in bed all night visualizing how it would go and how I would handle the transitions. I got there at 5 and went straight to the transition area. Much to my surprised, it opened at 5:30. Apparently, the website said two different things. They opened up at 5:10, probably due to the growing number of grumpy, uncaffineated triathletes lining up. I went to my transition, chatted with people at my bike rack, and basically just stood around for quite a while. At about 7, I struggled into my wetsuit (thank goodness Ben wasn’t there with his camera for THAT bit of theatre). I then went to check out the swim course, which was smooth as glass. It was really beautiful. About then, I felt a tap on my shoulder and who should be there but John Rodosta!! He and Ben had just shown up and were really excited. John was sporting a snazzy fedora. A little while later Dad and Ginny showed up. We all sat around for a while watching the other waves go, when I heard “wave 15 to the staging area.”
I scampered over to the area and ended up chatting with a really nice lady. (She's the tiny one in front of me) Everyone there was amazingly friendly. It came up in conversation that mixed gender races weren’t nearly as chatty or polite. Hmm…. Anyway, I got ready to go and swam out to the orange buoy that marked the starting point. A few seconds later the air horn sounded and we were off. As I cruised along, I was suddenly pushed to the side! Yikes! The lady next to me was sitting the buoy and did a couple of breast stroke kicks right into my… chest. This was to occur a number of times on the swim. After I zig zaged my way through the buoys, over correcting often, I finally made it to the swim finish. Up I stood, and away I ran. In the gauntlet I saw the fam again.
Transition one went well. Or at least as well as pulling a sticky wetsuit off and putting socks, pants, and shoes on a wet, pudgy body can go. Three and a half minutes later, and I was jogging my bike to the bike start. It must of looked pretty funny as I got dressed. The first thing I did was put my helmet on. So I was standing there, struggling to get dressed with a big old bike helmet perched atop my head like a mushroom cap. (more in part two..)

Race Results are in!!

I'm working on the narrative about how yesterday went and will get it up as soon as I get the pictures off of Ben's camera. Until then.. the results!

My division (age group of 30-39 year olds) was 87 people. I came in 56th.
Over all 356 women did the super sprint, I came in 201st over all.
The average time for the course was 1:04:54. I was a little slower than average at 1:05:43.

Splits:
Swim 11:39
Transition 1 3:34 (takes a while to peel off that wetsuit)
Bike 30:35 (Right on schedule)
Transition 2 1:35
Run 18:22

My view is that I didn't do all that badly! Go me! More to come later!

Tomorrow looms....

Well, 11 hours and counting until I'm setting up on site for my first tri. Yikes!! This week has been full of excitement.

The first thrill of the week was battling the wetsuit monster. So, back in July, I got a really good deal on a wetsuit. Unfortunately, I underestimated my appetite, and got one that I could "shrink" into. Needless to say, between the stress eating and the exercised induced munchies, I've only lost 5 pounds, not the 20 I had planned. Oops! I was looking at having to swim without a wetsuit tomorrow. At first I hadn't thought it would be that big of a deal, but ocean swimming looks a lot warmer in July than in October. As the Tri club practices changed from "no wetsuit" to "wetsuit optional" and now to "wetsuit recommended," I realized that if I wanted to have any fun (not induced by hypothermia) I'd better find me a wetsuit that fit, fast. I googled "wetsuit rental San Diego" and found a great site that was founded by a former triclub president. I ordered my suit and waited anxiously for it to arrive. When I tried it on Wed. night, horror ensued. I forgot to have a nice cool drink with me and the fan on. I'd barely gotten it past my knees when I had a MAJOR hot flash. Plus, do you have any idea how hard it is to get one of these dang things on?? It was like putting on the pantyhose from h**l. I ended up freaking out, taking off the suit and needing a medicinal beer.

Thursday I tried again, this time having the medicinal beer before I tried to put it on. I got it on, but then we couldn't get the zipper to work. Needless to say, I had visions of me looking like an over microwaved hot dog, and I gave up. Ben worked on the zipper as I hugged the dogs, and finally got it unstuck. (He reassured me that it was the zipper, NOT my physique that made it stick.)

Then the most wonderful man in the world called me right before his lunch break and asked if we wanted to give it a try again. He drove home, we suited up, and then we trudged to the bay. It was great! Those things are REALLY buoyant. My biggest problem was that my butt was so buoyant my head kept going underwater. Oh well. No worries about drowning as long as I float on my back. :)

I also had an interesting revelation about Meggie. I was re-reading my posts, and I noticed that back in July Meggie was barely able to run/walk (60 sec / 90 sec) 20 minutes without being totally exhausted. Wow has she come a long way!!! She's totally super dog now. Monday Ben and I took the dogs to the Fiesta Island dog park for a run. The dog park is huge but ugly as sin. It looks like blasted moon rock and only has 2 trees. So, Ben and I brought the mountain bikes and road around the perimeter for a while at 8-11 mph. The girls ran right along side us! Meggie and Nanner kept up a run for over half an hour. And they weren't even whooped when we were done! They rested for a bit, but had tons of energy again within an hour. Talk about Iron dogs!

Well, I need to go rest up and lay out my stuff for tomorrow. (An advance thanks to Ben, John, Dad, and Ginny for coming out at the crack of dawn to see me race!) Wish me luck.

A new personal trainer

It's been an interesting week so far. I saw parts of my first triathlon. I volunteered at the Tri Club of SD half iron man event / practice. The folks who were participating were great! I was at both a bike and a run station and everyone who stopped by was super nice. They were also obscenely fit. That part was a little discouraging. Of course, all the people competing were ready to swim a mile, bike 56 miles, and THEN run 13 miles. If I'm ever up for a half iron man, I'd better be obscenely fit too! In order to eventually achieve this level of fitness, I've engaged a new personal trainer.
Yep, it's MEGGIE the wonder dog. After every run, I've been giving the dogs some nice, yummy, high calorie kibble. It turns out that Meggie took the good kibble to heart. Yesterday I was feeling lazy and didn't want to get out of bed. I'd set my alarm so that I could be up and running by 5 am. (Yeah I know... ewwwwww) Well, at 4:45 I changed my alarm to go off at 6. At 5:11 I had a stuffed monkey thrown in my face by a hyper, grunt-whining dog. Yes, Meggie decided that it was Sunday, which meant it was time for a run so she could get her yummy kibble. So I was going to get up darn it. If I didn't get up, there'd be no run, and thus no kibble. Needless to say, I got up. As I stumbled along on my run, in the dark, I ended up tripping and banging my elbow, thigh, and hand. I was less than 10 minutes into my run, and I totally had the urge to hobble home to lick my wounds. I ended up continuing my run for a total of 25 minutes and going further than I had before. I actually went past my first distance goal. (woo hoo!) Now the hard part for me lately has been swimming. I don't know why I've had no motivation to swim. It's my favorite form of exercise and the leg I'm best at in tri. (Hmm.. it might have something to do with wearing a swim suit in front of other people.... It might get better when I get my wetsuit.) Anyway, I've decided to force myself to get into the pool. I signed up for classes. There's an intermediate class that deals specifically with triathlon swimming (swimming in a pack, drafting, swimming in a wetsuit) that I signed up for. So, I'm going to be in the pool today at 7 pm. I figure if I can do it for 3 weeks, I'll be able to continue it with the tri-club's weekly practice. Wish me luck!