HAWK ISLAND TRIATHLON

HOORAY! HOORAY! HOORAY! I'm officially a Triathlete!!! I can hardly believe the day finally came to see if I could do it, and I did!

Mid-March I saw a poster at the YMCA I work out at about a Sprint Triathlon, and I thought, "Hmmmm....should I?" I kept thinking about it for a few days and before I knew it, I was signed up. The last time I had done any sort of race was a 5K out in Utah, and that was about 4-5 years ago. I didn't know anyone else who was doing the tri, and I knew this would be a way to motivate me to see what I could do on my own. So for the past 2-1/2 months, I've been swimming, biking and running as much as possible. At first, it was a pretty scary sight, but over time 1 mile of running turned into 2 and then 3 and then even 4, and I wasn't having to breath in all of the oxygen in the fitness room to do it.

It was nice to start exercising in different ways than I normally had. I was an "elliptical" girl for a very very long time, but I found that I wasn't feeling like I was getting a good workout. I signed up for a swimming class with a great instructor at the Y and set off trying to swim as much as possible. She worked us so hard that at one point I can home and felt like I was about to black out. Not good. But she truly helped us feel like we could be competitors in the water.

Biking was hard for me at first. For one thing, I didn't have a bike for the first month or so of training. Instead I biked at our club house on a stationary bike which was good for the muscles, but not so good for the reality of biking. Sooner or later I had to factor in wind resistance, achy wrists and a sore butt from biking on Michigan roads, which I never felt on a stationary bike. But it was much more inspirational to coast through pretty areas of town and see the start of a Spring season. By the way, many of these workouts down at the clubhouse included my tag-a-long son, who patiently sat in his stroller with cheerios and a Baby Einstein movie, which gave me a total of 35 minutes to work out before he would get completely bored.

My goal was to finish. I didn't make any lofty or competitive goals whatsoever. It was the last thing I always thought about before going to bed; "I can do this...I can do this..." I don't know how many times I told myself that. I finished with a time of 1:30:08 sec. which was by far better than I thought I would do. That's factoring in transition times and a very windy day on a bike. Arg. Everytime I passed a person I did a little "Hallelujah" in my head, but there were far more people who passed me, in which I told myself, "Yeah, when I get calves like that, and a road bike as expensive and nice as yours...." It worked a bit:)

Then came running. I can't believe I use to run a 7 minute mile in High School. Seriously?!?! I knew I had to pace myself, especially since I was beat by the time I had to run. (The order of a tri is swim, bike, run) My legs felt like jello/bricks getting off of the bike, and it took me a good mile before my legs felt like they were stable:) I'm the first to admit that I am a slow runner, but I'm proud to say I didn't have to stop running, or quit swimming or coast on my bike once. I just kept pushing because I knew it was going to be over sooner or later:)

FYI, a Sprint Triathlon is 400m swim, 16K bike, and a 5K run. So it's totally doable for anyone and everyone! I highly recommend it! Next goal for the summer is to sign up for another one! I think I'll really enjoy this. And THANK YOU to Erin and Josh for being so willing to watch Isaac for us during the Triathlon. I know Sean really appreciated not having to run around after him and just being able to enjoy the race.