My First Tri!

This morning I woke up(before my alarm, grrr) at 4:23 and the first thought in my head was, I don't want to do this! All week I'd been nervously excited for my first triathlon and then the morning of it was just like my body new what was coming and it was trying to convince me to "just say no." I arrived and got everything set up then decided to skip my warm up in the pool due to the rather chilly weather. (The weather was perfect for a tri by the way! Thanks God!) As I lined up with my group of 5:00-5:59 min swimmers I felt kind of awkward because I ended up being the front of the line with 36, 43, and 57 year old men right behind me that were all like 6' 5". I swam my 300 yards in 4:45 which is 15 seconds faster than I ever have before, that was freakin awesome! Gotta love that race day adrenaline! The bike portion really wasn't too bad I actually felt like I had prepared for it pretty well. But I would like to throw my bike in the garbage right now, the seat was too low, every time I stood up my knee hit the gear shifter, my chain came off and my peddle was screwed up and all crooked. And I'd only really been on 3 rides on that bike so I wasn't too familiar with how it shifted. Maybe next time if I can get all that figured out I can pick up my speed a couple mph, I did my 12 miles in 50 min and I know I could do it in 45! Then came the run, that was just a joke. The first 1/4 of a mile I was trying to catch my breath and get my leg muscles to figure out how to run after biking, then I hit the 1 mile mark and realized I could walk faster than I was running so I did the last 2 miles in run 2 min/walk 1 min intervals finishing in 32:08. Somehow that only slowed down my normal running pace by 22 seconds, which makes me feel like a totally slow and lame runner. I crossed the finish line in 95 minutes and had to stop to get my chip taken off my ankle and I kind of felt like I was going to fall over right there, but luckily my legs held up (that's why you are supposed to do a cool down after a work out and not just stop immediately!) In the end I loved it and was pretty amazed that I did it. In high school just the thought of swimming a 300 would have scared me off, and never in a million years would I have guessed that I could run 3 miles without dying! I'm really glad I got to share the day with Matt and Jo (my goal is to someday beat Matt, which should be pretty easy to catch up to him seeing as he is 14 years older than me!) . I've been spending all afternoon looking up races, if I can come up with $33 I just might do a duathlon in October. I'm addicted, I love tri's! I'm so thankful God's given me the ability to get out there and have some fun taking care of my "temple" (1 Cor 6:19).