Oh Yeah, I'm Doing A Triathlon

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It occurred to me that I haven't really announced that I'm doing a triathlon.  I've talked about it a lot on Facebook, but not so much here.  So yeah, I'm doing a triathlon.  I don't really know why I'm doing it.  Like most major life decisions, someone asked me if I wanted to do it & I said, "Sure."

The details:  We're doing the Team Magic Girls Tri It On Nashville on Saturday, August 18th.  The race is a 200 m pool swim, 8 km bike & 2 km run.  It should take me about 45 minutes, but it'll probably take me an hour & a half.  Oh, and "we" is me & two fellow East Nasties:  Heidi & Alicia.

The training:  We registered back in June & immediately started training.  We decided to focus on swimming since we're all runners & riding a bike is like, well, riding a bike.  I've also been taking a circuit class twice a week to work on my upper body strength.

Swim:  We've been swimming 2-3 times a week for about 5 weeks now.  Having my dad come spend a day in the pool with us kind of saved our swimming lives.  I only wish I had thought to ask him earlier.  Since swimming with him, we've quit trying to perfect our "form" & are now building up our endurance.  I can't swim freestyle for 200 meters, but I can swim breaststroke for 200 meters & on a good day, I can swim 200 meters alternating between freestyle & breaststroke.  We've been training in a 25 m pool & our race is in a 50 m pool, so we're switching to a 50 m pool this week & staying there throughout the rest of the training.  If I make it through this race without drowning, I'm getting a tramp stamp that says, "Swimming is HARD, y'all."  Obviously, it'll be in some ancient unreadable language. OBVIOUSLY.

Bike:  The bike portion of this race was a little tricky to wrap my mind around initially.  Primarily because I didn't own a bike, nor know how to ride one.  Luckily, I can ride John's old mountain bike (it has road tires).  I've only ridden it once, but I rode it for 5 miles, which is about the length of the race.  It took me 30 minutes, which is insane if you know how long it should actually take to ride 5 miles (5-10 minutes).  I'm terrified of anyone or anything coming within 10 feet of me while I'm riding, so yeah, I need to work on that.  Oh, and I have trouble using the hand brakes.  I'm a bigger fan of just putting me feet on the ground when I need to stop or slow down, you know, like the professionals do.

Run:  I can run 2 km in my sleep.  This isn't even worth talking about, except to say that I do need to practice "bricks", or transitions.  Apparently going from a bike to a run is super awkward & your legs feel like they weigh 1,000 lbs & they kind of forget how to work, which sounds awesome, clearly.  We're going to practice bricks this weekend.  We attended a tri clinic at Fleet Feet last night & they said to practice riding for 10 minutes & then running a mile to get your legs used to it.  Seems doable.  We'll see..

So yeah, I'm doing a triathlon.  Oh, & this distance is called a "Sprint" - FYI.  The next level up is Intermediate, or Olympic, then Long, which is double Olympic, then Half, as in "Half" Ironman, then Long again, but a triple Olympic this time, & finally Full, or Ironman.  My friends Marne & Julie (Hot Koh Koh!) are currently training for an Ironman in November.  It will be their second.  They are cra.

This post is ridiculously long & I haven't even gone into my training schedule yet or how much all of this costs ($$$!!!).  Stay tuned for follow-up posts.  I've made a "Triathlon" label, so if you're more interested in this, than say, reading about what color I painted my nails on Friday night, feel free to check in by clicking that label over in the right-hand margin.  If you need me in the meantime, I'll be in the pool.