Our First Triathlon

One of my New Year's Resolutions this year was to do a triathlon. I just wanted to get out of our boring, normal routine of working out at the gym and wanted to try something new. It was a stretch for me to try and add biking and swimming into my workouts, although since we have access to our gym now it wasn't too hard. I would just go swimming while the boys were in the gym day care and then go get them out and bring them swimming with me, and I mostly just rode the stationary bikes there as well. I coerced Tommy into doing it with me, and we didn't ever really train together, but we talked about our plans and it was fun to be planning it with each other. 

While I was looking at the options for races online, all I really cared about was finding one that was close and not on a Sunday--and that basically counted out almost all of them! But we luckily found one in the beginning of May that was only 10 minutes from our house and was a sprint triathlon distance--the shortest one (which we wanted): 350 meter swim, 12 mile bike, 5K run. I felt pretty confident in all three sports by the time the race came around. 

We showed up, checked in, and got our transition area set up (where you leave your bike and stuff for you to go after the swim and after the bike). (I'm teasing Tommy for taking this picture of me.)

And we then had to wait around for a long time before actually jumping in the water. It was really interesting to look around and see all the different levels of commitment people had to the sport. We were just wearing our normal swimsuits, and we'd just recently bought cheap-o bikes, but most people had actual triathlon suits on and super fancy road bikes. 

We did the swimming pretty well--it actually took a minute longer than I expected. But then the biking was WAY worse than I thought it was going to be. Our super cheap bikes ended up being an issue and contributing to us taking a LONG long time on the bike section (plus I think I underestimated it and didn't train hard enough). But the run was great--we did it faster than I expected. 

All in all--it was really fun! It was a great experience and I really liked training for it. And it was something totally new to me, which made it an exciting adventure. We were both SUPER tired later in the day. We conked out and both took two-hour naps in the afternoon. I would definitely do this again sometime--probably not very soon, but maybe in a couple of years. It is much easier than long running races on my knees and it felt so legit to be doing a real triathlon race. Thanks for the example, Dad.