Practice Triathlon Day

5:30am - Saturday

Just got up and even though I slept pretty good, I have butterflies in my belly :o( I am eating my usual breakfast....peanut butter and honey on a chocolate chip muffin...YUMMY. Everything is packed and ready to go. I will go get dressed and wait for Anthea to pick me up at 6:15.

....to be continued

10:00am Sunday RESTING :o)

800yard swim, 18mile bike ride & approx. 2mile run ACCOMPLISHED :o) I FINISHED and felt awesome yesterday doing our mini triathlon. It was the first time that we had done all three sports together. I felt awesome and had a pretty good day. I finished it all in 2hours and 12minutes. Not too bad.

We got to Shadow Cliffs around 6:45 and quickly found a spot to set up our transition area. Of course mine was super neat, which I knew wasn't going to last long. Coach Tim explained the course to us and gave us some tips before starting. We also got to hear from one of our honoree's before the start of the swim to get us motivated and remind us why we are here at 7am on Saturday morning when most people are probably still sleeping. The swim started with the Half Iron Man team, then the Olympic Girls (that's me) and then the Olympic Boys. Our group was to swim 3 1/2 laps counterclockwise, about 800 yards. I felt much better today during my swim and I got a good rhythm going. I finished the swim in about 24 minutes. I was kind of dizzy from the swim so that was a weird feeling. My transition from the swim to the bike was pretty quick. I had no problem getting my wetsuit off. I dried off quickly, had a power gel and some water, got all my bike gear on and headed off. The bike ride was an 8 mile loop, we did the loop twice. I finished that in a little over an hour. Transtion from bike to run was also quick although I forgot to change my shirt into the one with my race number on it, oh well. On race day I'll have a race number belt. Headed off onto the run and felt really good although my legs felt like jello for at least 10 minutes. I'm not really sure on the distance we ran but we think it was almost 2 miles. I finished feeling great. The weather was also perfect and it never rained :o) YAY!

I am really glad that we had a chance to do this practice triathlon. I have a couple of things that I want to change about my transition so it's even quicker. I was finally able to take my power gel and hydrate while on the bike so I'm pretty happy about that. I am feeling so much better after seeing how well I did yesterday. I was really starting to worry that maybe I wouldn't be able to do this. I know I can, although Wildflower's bike ride will be MUCH MORE challenging because of the hills. I WILL do this though......there are NO WIMPS!!!!