My First Triathlon

The day started out way too early (4 am). I already hadn’t been getting a ton of sleep so I wasn’t as excited for this race as I felt I should have been. Scott was a sweet heart and drove the whole way to Muncie so I could at least attempt to sleep. I ate my breakfast of champions on the way to the race (honey comb-generic version). Getting marked up and setting up transition took a lot longer than I thought it would.

So the start of the race…. We all went down to the beach and I started with the first group that was comprised of people that thought they could place in the top 5 in their race, about 40 people. I was the only one in the group that didn’t have a wet suit on, I just wore a tri suit of sorts. Well they shot a cannon off and we ran into the water and started swimming.

My sister told me to get on someone’s feet and go with them. Well, that was a great plan and I really tried to do that, but I couldn’t see my hand in the water nonetheless someone else’s feet. So I decided I guess I’m on my own for this. The way down was great. I was spotting well and swimming well. I made the first turn and went the 150m and made the second turn. After the second turn I thought, “where am I supposed to go!!!” I couldn’t see a single buoy in front of me because the sun was so bad. I saw someone’s arm come out of the water and went in that direction. I kept swimming and kept not seeing any buoys. I finally stopped for a little bit and looked around for a buoy and saw one 50 meters to the right of me. Oops! I was supposed to be on the other side. So I swam back out and tried to spot more buoys and kept swimming. I had to stop several more times to try to see the beach. I finnaly saw the big buoy and the dock and then I felt the ground with my hand.

Transition was pretty good. It was a long up hill run to get into transition. Scott stood next to me cheering me on the whole time. I was off on the bike! Ever since I have had aerobars put on my bike, I’ve fallen in love with it. The bike was a two loop course that other described as hilly, and I would describe as not bad. My first loop was about 35 minutes and Scott almost missed me since he wasn’t expecting to see me. On my second loop I encountered a guy who really didn’t want to be chicked J.  I was probably happiest about how my bike went. It was a little windy and not completely flat and I still went faster than what I had set my goal as.

T2 wasn’t as good. I didn’t have it all lined out in my mind so I was a little flustered when I was leaving. I was going to go to the port-a-potty until I realized that it was the opposite way of where I was supposed to run and decided that the 75 meters was just too far. The run was what I was most disappointed with. I should have gone faster and could have. I just was so nervous about running out of energy and going out too fast. My last mile was faster than 6:10 pace and my last .2 was faster than 5min pace (up a hill). So, I had a lot left in the tank, lesson learned for next time!

I did end up winning my first triathlon, which felt pretty good! Next on the list July 7^th Muncie Half Iron Man!