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September 15, 2008

I Tri -ed!!!

It was GREAT! My friend and I went down the day before to register and get prepared, practice our transitions, and to check out the course, etc. Anticipation was building because we didn't sleep a wink, not one. For me though, my anxiety began to subside because I couldn't really think about it as I was setting everything up and we ran into a bunch of people we knew (great distraction). There was so much positive energy and everyone was great to be around.

We got to the race at 5 am and our wave was going to start at 7:40 am but it felt more like 10 minutes to me before we were in the water waiting for the buzzer to go off. I felt surprisingly confident, partly because I had no expectations of great times or anything, and didn't have much anxiety (which is so unlike me or maybe I just suppressed it).

I beyond exceeded my expectations in the swim. I had no problems doing freestyle and feeling great, although some woman for a bit kept trying to grab my ankle. Once I broke out of the pack and stopped getting bumped into, it was nothing. I noticed I caught up to and was swimming in the wave that had gone out ahead of me and that gave me a boost.

Then we actually had to run a quarter of a mile from the beach to the transition area and I could tell I was pretty serious about my transition, I didn't want to fool around (which was funny, the little competitor in me came out). Of course I didn't do great on the first transition and got knocked over by another biker before I could even get on my bike. The bike was nice and I tried to use it to recover for the run, my toughest part. I thought I paced myself well and took the bike easy but I couldn't imagine how I was going to run after all that. My run was half run half walk, I didn't feel too tired, but my body didn't feel like it had much strength left. That was my worst run time, but I don't care. I did better overall than I thought I would.

Each leg of the race I kept thinking I'm a third done, I'm two thirds done, it's in the bag, I'm done. It was so funny. I loved hearing people call out my number and encouraging me. It felt like everybody wanted everybody to do well, and it was really wonderful. I didn't get as emotional as I thought, no big waterfall of tears or breakdown. But every time I think about the fact that I did it and when I think of myself as a triathlete (athlete, even) my eyes well up.

I'm so happy I did this and I want to keep going. I'm still in some disbelief and now it seemed to happen so fast, I want to do another one right away.

Sally Edwards who is the director in charge of the Danskin Triathlons (she's 65 and Master's world record holder in the Ironman) said that, as long as she's been doing races and staying fit, every year of her life has gotten better and she wants to break the paradigm that it wouldn't be so.

I want that to be my mantra.

YAY, I did it!

Overall Rank - 908 of 1513
Class Rank - 147 of 214
Swim - 00:17:01
Swim Rank - 542
Trans1 - 00:05:43
Bike - 00:36:17
Bike Rank - 872
Trans2 - 00:01:18
Run - 00:38:17
Run rank - 1221
Pace - 00:12:21
Final - 01:38:39

Posted by hopeful @ September 15, 2008 11:37 AM

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