Echo Triathlon

This should be old news for everyone, but the sake of "history" =)...

I went to an "open swim" clinic at Echo Lake the Tuesday before the big event. It was MUCH harder than I expected, and most of the swim I was alternating between thinking, "Tyler is going to be so mad at me for wasting the money to sign up for the triathlon because when I can't do it!" and "How embarrassing is it going to be to have to be rescued when I try to do this when I am totally unprepared." By the end of the swim, I had calmed down and felt pretty confident that I would be able to do it and probably wouldn't have to be rescued, but I still panicked a little every time I thought about the race. I got a pedicure the night before to get me pumped. I wanted water, a runner and a bike painted on my toenails. The ladies claimed that was too hard and asked me to pick one. I decided on a runner since that was my strongest event.

It was great because every time I looked down I would think, "I'll be fine when I get to the run!"

So the race began for me at 7:50. Since I'm female and old, we were the last ones to begin. Here's a view from the transition area.

It looked terrifyingly far from the shore! Right before, I had the option of standing a little closer to shore or going to the actual "starting line" and treading water- being so short is such a disadvantage! I stayed closer to shore and talked a bit to some of the other women. I found another woman who only learned to swim a couple of months ago as well. I figured we were probably at about the same level and decided to swim with her. The gun when off, and I kind of lost track of her, but knew she was in the same general area and headed for the first buoy. I was nervous and my heart rate was a bit high, but manageable. After what could only have been a few minutes I could see someone waving their arms in the air. As I got closer, I realized it was the woman I had been talking to- she needed rescued before we even reached the first buoy! It seems so silly now, but total chaos ensued among all of the women I was swimming with. I certainly had the feeling of, "I'm in the middle of a lake and I'm going to die," and I'm guessing everyone else did as well. Suddenly none of us where swimming freestyle- some people had flipped on their backs and others where treading water or doing the breast stroke. I was completely panicked and flipped on my back to calm down. The fear was almost palpable and I quickly realized that if I wanted to finish this, I needed to get away from there! I had told myself all morning, "If I can just get around the first buoy, I'll be okay," so I got myself over there as quickly as possible, flipped around the buoy and started singing my "theme song" to myself.

During the open swim clinic, the instructor had encouraged me to chose a song to sing in my head to focus my thoughts. Her theme song is "Poker Face." I guess a lot of people use that because I heard plenty of women singing it as we prepared that morning. Mine was Black Eyed Peas "I Gotta Feeling." Specifically I used the, "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday..." part and the "do it and do it and do it, do it, do it" part. For some reason that part just reminded me that this was easy and I could do it all day long if I needed to. After that I had no problems. I never got splashed in the face (one of my biggest fears). I had people go on both sides of me and over the top of me, but I had practiced that and it wasn't scary at all.

The next part was the biking. Tyler took this right as I was stopping and getting off of the bike. Hideous picture of me, but all I've got!

I felt pretty confident in this area, but knew I was slow enough in the water that I had a lot of time to make up. As I went up the first hill, my chain came off. Since I've never put my chain back on by myself, I just looked down and prayed it back on! It popped back on, but every time I tried to lower the gear it made a weird sound like it was coming off again, so I opted to just leave it in pretty high gear for most of the race. I think that was probably a good idea since it just made me pumped to try harder, but it hurt! The best part of the bike ride was passing up people on their really fancy bikes with expensive tires and clip on shoes. Here I was, crazy slow out of the water, on my cheap bike and running shoes passing them up. It was the best! =)

Then on to the run. The hardest part of the run (besides the fact that your legs feel like jello when you get off the bike) was that I could see the two women that I rode up with doing it ahead of me. It turned out that I was not behind them by much (and was actually faster than one of them) but I seemed so far behind. I was just thinking how horrible I was doing and that this wasn't fun at all and that I never wanted to do it again. Funny how skewed our perspective can be, but I focused on finishing strong. One thing I did love was that you write on the back of your calves your age and whether you are doing the Sprint or Olympic length. I loved saying to myself, "You got out of the water faster than me and I'm still passing you!" Or, "I'm 10 years older than you and I am still faster than you!" When you cross the finish line in this race, they announce your name. Then you feel like a real athlete =)

Anyway, overall it was a good experience. Here's Emmaline, there to cheer me on!


My final time was 1:43:46.2. I placed 15th out of 28 in my age group. It took me 22:54 to swim half a mile, 46:01 to bike 16 miles, and 28:10 to run 3 miles (ran slower than I wanted- it was HARD and I was really discouraged). I still like marathons better, but I feel like I am more balanced now. If I do it again, I might try the Olympic length. I felt like, with the Sprint, I was just rushing the whole time. I didn't really have time to get into the groove of one event before I had to rush to do the next one. So that's the story- if you haven't ever tried it, you should. It's completely attainable.