We arrived in Idaho on Thursday. The race was Saturday. I was a little worried because for some reason on Wednesday night my insomnia flared up. I really hadn't had any issues with sleeping for a while, especially with the insane training schedule. But for some reason I couldn't sleep the night before we left. I did make a mental note that morning (4 am) that I should bring my ambian along just in case I had trouble the night before the race. However, by the time we left for the airport I had forgotten. Friday our training schedule called for a short swim, bike and run. The house we stayed in was right on the lake. It was spectacular. Jenni, Janice and I suited up in our wetsuits for a quick swim in the lake. It felt great and so did my swim. Here are a few pictures from our warm up.
I felt great the whole day. My bike went well and so did the run. I was ready.......then.....insomnia. I went to bed around 10pm and fell right to sleep. A little while later Elle started crying with a bad dream. Guess what, I couldn't go back to sleep. After about an hour of tossing and turning I got up and went downstairs to read. When I felt my eyes wouldn't stay open I went to bed.....tossing and turning. When I say I didn't sleep at all, I mean I did not sleep at all. We had decided to get to the race by 5:30. When I finally got up I was nauseated and felt like crap. I could barely eat anything. My eyes felt awful. I was depressed and sad. I couldn't believe after how good I felt the day before that not sleeping was going to ruin my race. I just hoped that adrenaline would get me going. Here is a shot of me before the race setting up my transition area. The only good thing about not sleeping was I couldn't really muster the strength to be nervous.
The triathlon was divided into two start heats, 40 and under and 40 and older. I was in the first heat wave and Jenni and Janice were in the second. At first I was a little nervous with all the people crammed into such a small area. But after a few minutes I decided I was just going to go for it and do my best. I had practiced a lot in very rough waters in Missouri and I felt confident I would be able to swim this time without panicking. The start of the swim was chaotic. It took a while to enter the water. I was in the middle of the pack, not in front, but not too far back. At first it was just a washing machine of feet, hands, legs, and heads. I did not let that bother me and went for it.
Ok, if you look real close at the picture below, you can see me. I am #12. There is a guy right in the middle of this picture. Directly to the left of him with a sleeveless wet suit is me. I am in front of the woman messing with her goggles.
The picture below shows the first yellow buoy we had to swim to. This seemed soooo far away. Not to mention it was very windy and the water was choppy. It took a lot of effort to swim into that kind of water.
I made it. I was very relieved to be done with the swim. I was hoping for a 30 minute swim, but finished at 33 minutes. Not too bad. My goggles fogged up about half way, and I think I might have gone faster if I would have taken care of that right away. Instead I kept looking up to sight but couldn't see a thing and that slowed me down. It took me a few minutes after the swim to get my legs back.
One of my goals was to speed up in the transition areas. The last triathlon I took over 4 minutes in the bike transition. I did better this time, but could still stand to improve. It is just really hard to put wet feet into dry socks!
The bike portion was very tough. I had a mild technical difficulty that made the biking even harder. Unfortunately I did not tighten my handle bars enough so as soon as I was going downhill and hit a bump, my handle bars would shift forward making it very hard to brake. Lucky for me a lot of the bike was uphill........if you can call that lucky. Jenni and I both agreed that we would not have done so well on the bike if we hadn't done our 50 mile hill ride every weekend. These hills were ugly. They were short, but steep. That means the downhill was steep as well. With the shifting of my handle bars, I was afraid I was going to have bald spots on my tires from riding the brakes so much. I couldn't believe how fast people could go down these hills. Especially since they were curvy. Overall I accomplished my goal of completing the bike in 1:30 hours. I was sooo happy to be done with that portion of the race. If you can't tell by the big smile as I came into transition for the run.
Here I am after my potty break. Whew, what relief. I also pass that guy in the green shirt...so slow. :)
I felt great the last three miles of the run. Here I am with only about 1/4 of a mile to go.
Here I am right after the finish drinking water. I can't believe I am done.
This is how I know I have such a great husband. He got both Jenni and I trophies for when we finished. That was awesome. Here I am holding mine.
The kids did a great job. This kind of thing is really boring for them. The park had an awesome playground to keep them busy.
Jenni and I took a couple of shots in our t-shirts from the race holding our trophies. We were being silly acting like we won the whole thing. I love Jenni in this picture. She did a great job. It is hard to believe that she is 50 years old!!! She finished 12 out of 24 and that was after having a tough time in the water. Wow. I can only hope to be that fit at 50. 
More silliness.
Overall I am very proud of my results. My total time was 3:05. 33 swim, 1:30 bike, and 56 run. I finished 16 out of 32 in my age group. Although I might have finished a few higher, the competition for the first 12 spots was way beyond my capability. People have been asking me if I would do it again. Hell yeah. I accomplished more then I ever thought I could. Before this race I had never run more then 5 miles. During training, I did 8. It showed me that you can do anything you want to do if you just set your mind to it. I am now trying to get Keith to run the PF Chang 1/2 marathon in January. I want to do something together. I am also considering some duathlons (run, bike, run) this fall. I do find having a goal to focus on keeps you motivated to train harder and longer. It also helps satisfy my competitive nature. Now if I can only figure out how to better balance a husband, two kids, a full time job, and training. That's the real Triathlon!!
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