My Triathlon journey..I really did it! (Long version)

Yesterday I competed in my first ever sprint Triathlon (1/2 mile swim, 12.7 miles bike, 2.75 mile run). It was an all women's event. I'm happy to say...I DID IT! I'M ALIVE! IT WAS SO FUN! I can't believe I am saying the words..."it was so fun", but it really was. It is so amazing to be able to achieve a goal like this. Doing something that I never pictured myself doing. I have been exercising my whole adult life, five days a week, and have competed in 5k's here and there, did my first 10K this summer, but a triathlon just seemed like too much. But somehow, me and 8 of my friends were inspired by a friend to do this triathlon. Many of the girls had to learn to swim, a few hadn't been on a bike since they were kids, most didn't like to run, and 4 of us had had babies in the last year. So a group of "athletes" we were not. But motivated we became. Though I mostly trained on my own (except for Saturday's) we supported each other and talked "triathlon" at playgroups, bookclub, church, and through e-mail. I became so close to these woman and loved sharing this experience with them.

I have been training six days a week since mid August (though before then I was running every day), and I really enjoyed the variety of the three different events. I had not biked since I first got married, but I borrowed a road bike from my neighbor (now I want my own) and learned to bike. Though I had some battles with the toe-clips for about a week...we soon bonded. I biked 12 miles pretty much every other day. Soon I added running onto my biking day. The other three days a week I would swim (in our neighborhood pool...advantage of living in Florida...year round swimming) and also run or bike. I trained from 7:30 to 8:30/9:00 every morning after I got the middle two kids to school, but John and Kinsey were still home with Cooper (middle school starts late in Florida). On Saturday's I would sometimes train with friends, and we even did a few mock triathlons to make sure we could do the whole thing. By the time I did the triathlon, I really did feel ready. Nervous about things out of my control...but ready.

The race went so well. The weather was overcast and around 75 or 80 degrees (better than our recent temp of 96..only a few days ago). John and the kids were there to cheer me on, me and my friends had been there all morning getting ready. There was excitement in the air. The race began and I felt confident in every event, and though it was hard and very challenging, it was what I had expected. Swimming in the lake went great (my friends and I had done a practice run the week before) and I actually felt very comfortable out there with almost 200 other women. Me and my friends were in the second wave (We decided to do the Novice category...for first timers) and we started 3 minutes later. We had orange swim caps, and the first wave had pink. As we got into the water and I swam past the first marker, I noticed that I started to pass quite a few pink swim caps, and that was very motivating for me knowing that they had started three minutes before me. My friend Sara Rose and I hopped out of the water ahead of a lot of the "oranges" and started our run to the transition area (1/4 mile barefoot and in a swimsuit). Sara was ahead of me and I was determined to catch up to her. Sara and I are the most evenly matched in the race and so she and I are always neck and neck and have a little friendly competition going on. She happens to be one of my closest friends, and so it was fun to have her near me in the race. If anyone was going to beat me, I wanted it to be her. We got to the transition area and had to put our shoes, shirts and shorts, helmet, and glasses on. Sara was on her bike before me and about 30 seconds ahead. I felt good as I got on my bike and I was determined to catch Sara. I had to pass 25 people, but I caught her around mile 3 ( much to her chagrin), and got ahead a bit. I think both Sara and I pushed ourselves harder because we were competing against each other. The biking was hard, but it felt good and went smoothly. I passed a lot of people and no one ever passed me. I saw a lot of my friends as I looped back and it was so fun to yell out to each other. The transition from the bike to the run is logistically easy because all you have to do is put your bike on the rack, throw off your helmet, and start running. But it is physically the hardest transition. LEGS FEEL LIKE BRICKS. My legs seriously didn't feel like they started to work for almost a mile. Even though I have most experience with running, the run was hard. I think I kept a pretty good pace, but it just seemed so long. The end of the race was a beautiful thing and the feeling of running over the finish line was AMAZING! It was fun to have so many people from our ward there since so many of us were competing. I loved seeing John and the kids at each transition cheering me along. They were the best support. I had hoped to do the race in about an hour and a half. In practice I was a little over that, but I figured I would do a bit better on race day. Well, I surprised myself. I finished in 1.18.58. Just shy of an hour and 19 minutes. I couldn't believe it. Sara was two minutes behind me, my friend Jessica was four minutes later, and then our other friends soon after that. We all finished and everyone did such a great job. Another girl in our ward ended up winning the whole event. She did not train with us and we were not aware of her "abilities", so it was really neat to see how well she did. 1st place over all. Wow. Way to go Laurell. I did end up being 4th place in the "novice" category (probably about 60 to 70 people in that category), and I was 4th place in my age division over all...and would have come in 2nd place in the 20-25 division (okay, so I am 37, but it felt good to know I beat some of those young whipper snappers). And I was 25th out of the whole 200 competetors. My swim time for 750 meters was 12.22 minutes, my bike time for 12.7 miles was 37 minutes, and my running time was 23.45 minutes. Much improved times from my practices. I am just so thrilled with the way the whole race turned out. What an amazing experience. I have never felt like an athlete, but now...maybe a little bit! I am addicted and can't wait for my next triathlon.