Remembering my first tri

I was reminiscing about my first triathlon this past year and looking at the progress I have made in the world of triathletes, and thought I would share my thoughts with you, even though there's only one picture.  I had never really considered a triathlon before, in fact I'm not sure I  fully understood what a triathlon was.  Swim, Bike, Run, all in one day in one event.  It sounded fun, not too hard, and I thought it would be great for training diversity.  A few of us at work decided to motivate ourselves into getting into shape and agreed to sign up for the Cache Valley Sprint Triathlon, it was going to be one of those "bonding" moments.  In the end I was the only one that signed up.  In my eagerness I was the first one for the entire event to sign up.  How I know this is that my bib number was #1, and they assigned bib numbers by the order in which you registered.

This is a super easy event, it takes place in an outdoor swimming pool, the bike and the run are basically flat so it looked like a no risk adventure.  Swimming for me wasn't too much of a concern being a swimmer from my high school days.  The bike was certainly not a concern, I love to ride my bike and was already planning to participate in my second LOTOJA .

The run, well that was a different story.  I'm not a runner.  However, I was determined to start.  3.1 miles (5K) how bad can it be, if all else fails I could walk that far, right?  My first attempt at running made me inoperable!  Stiff, sore, and barely able to walk, it was no different than my first post on my blog, I felt completely out of shape!  But I could still ride my bike without any problem.  My first 3 mile run took 52 minutes, ouch! I' pretty sure I can walk 3 miles in that much time.  I could barely go the distance between two telephone poles on my feet.  But undaunted I persisted.

In the future I will make sure I'm not #1, I stood out like a wilted plant!  for the swim and the bike it wasn't too bad, in fact I did quite well on the bike, placing 22nd out of 122 participants and only missed first for my age group by 28 seconds, placing 2nd, so I was pretty jazzed about that.  The problem, as I predicted, came with the run.  I wish I would have counted how many people passed me on the run, "It's #1, I'm passing you"  or "Hey #1,  you passed me earlier", and my personal favorite: "#1, don't give up now, just keep going".  I'm convinced that any other bib number would not have gotten any attention at all, .  So while I still had a good time and will plan on doing this same event in 2011, I will make sure I'm not #1!

By the time the triathlon happened, I had my 3 miles down to a slow but respectable 33:51, and overall I was 91 out of 122 participants, at least I wasn't last! what a relief.  It was true I had made progress, and therefore, know I will improve again, even more so this time.  I will conquer this quest.  I have to, I am participating in the Wasatch Back (RAGNAR Relay) in June 2011.