My first triathlon

Yesterday I completed my 1st ever triathlon! It was terrifying and exciting both. Actually the swim was the terrifying part for me. I trained for it, but swimming in a reservoir with hundreds of other people vs. swimming in a clear pool by myself are completely different! Not long into the swim I had a guy literally swim onto my back which of course forced me under right as I was taking a breath. I inhaled quite a bit of water into my lungs. It was definitely a mind over matter thing. I kept saying I can do this, I can do this, I can do this over and over! It's just freaky having people kicking and grabbing you as you are trying to swim. I finished the 500 m swim in 14:00 minutes, not great, but I survived! Oh and did I mention it was 60 degrees out???? After the swim I ran into the transition area to where my bike was. Your time doesn't stop during this so I tried to keep that in mind as I was drying off and putting on my socks, shoes, shirt and helmet. Then you have to run your bike to the beginning of the bike course. I felt like I went as fast as I could, but my transition time was around 3:00 minutes. (not great)

The bike course was 10 miles and I probably should have trained a bit more on a hilly course b/c there were quite a few during the race. Also to make things a little more challenging was that the road was wet and slippery. They kept announcing to take the turns SLOWLY b/c of the road conditions. The bike portion took me 37:00 minutes. Again I headed into the transition area (about 2 minutes) where I took off my helmet and put the bike on its rack and ran out (it seemed like a long way) to the start of the last leg of the race, the 3 mile run.

The run wasn't bad except that the first 1.5 miles were at an incline! Hello, I just swam and biked and now I have to run 1.5 miles uphill?????? Once I made the turn and I knew the next 1.5 miles were downhill I was able to pick up my pace quite a bit. In the picture above I'm just heading out to run and I'm giving Maddy and Mallory high-fives. I was still smiling b/c I couldn't see the hill I was about to run up... The run took me 28:50. The entire race for me took 1 hour and 25 minutes.
Woo-hoo I did it! Maddy and Mallory were my little cheerleaders. It was sweet to hear them screaming "GO MOM,GO!!!!" throughout the race. My parents were there and so was Dan and his parents. It was nice to have a cheering section!
It was actually a lot of fun (minus the swim) and I'm thinking of doing an all girl tri next Saturday with my cousin. It's like giving birth...you forget the pain over time and consider another one. Ha!