Pink Power Sprint Triathlon Recap ...

On Thursday, SpeeDee (a.k.a. RunHapi13) mentioned me in her post. She said something about me being an a** kicker and that I would rock the triathlon and take home some hardware. I laughed in response. Because, seriously, you are crazy if you think that doing no bike or swim training for 2+ years is going to help you walk away with an award. That doesn't happen.

Well, until it happens.

Yeah, that's right. Despite, my utter lack of training and failure to assemble my bike until Saturday, I finished 3rd in the Athena division with a finishing time of 1:23:43. (I know. Pick your jaw up off the floor.)

So, here's how it went down.

G and I arrived at the race at the way too early hour of 5:30. We set up our transitions.

Took this super cute picture of us in our swim caps (how much do you love the pink?)

And proceeded to wait. And wait. It was a pool swim with a time trial start, so being #341, I had a while to hang around. In fact, I saw G enter and exit the pool before I even got in line.

The Swim (11:12): The swim was the leg of the race that I was most apprehensive about. It was longer than I had ever swam before (400 m) and I can't exactly swim freestyle. So, I (and my less than stellar breaststroke) headed into the pool a little worried. I started out as strong as could be expected and I had managed to catch up to the woman in front of me by the end of the lane. She let me pass and that was pretty much the last time I saw open water. From then on, a group of five of us proceeded to swim on top of each other. No one was fast enough to make a true pass and no one was slow enough to drop off. It was crazy annoying. And at the end of each lap, we would all get bottlenecked waiting to push off the wall. Eventually (it felt much longer than it actually was), I climbed out of the pool and headed to T1.

T1 (2:02): After some barefoot running from the pool to the transition area, I quickly ate a GU, dried my feet, threw on my socks, shoes, helmet, sunglasses and most importantly, running skirt. I unracked my bike and ran as fast as my tired legs could take me to the bike course.

The Bike (42:39): I knew heading into the bike that the course was rather hilly, which was actually an understatement. Compared to the other triathlons I have done, this course was freaking Mt. Everest. I swear there were times that I passed people who WERE NOT MOVING. Early in the bike, I messed with my gears during a climb. That was a big mistake. Apparently, in the two years since last riding my bike, I had forgotten how to change gears properly. TOTAL FAIL. Eventually, I got the gears to a comfortable position and didn't touch them again (this probably wasted a lot of unnecessary energy).

T2 (0:43): Once I dismounted my bike, I attempted to sprint (if you want to call it that) to rerack and head out on the run. I grabbed my handheld and was off.

The Run (27:09): Like the bike, the run was all about the climb. After the first half mile or so, the remainder of the course was pretty much uphill. I went Garmin-free and have no idea of what my splits were but I can guarantee that my first mile was considerably faster than my last. Despite being completely spent at the end, I did my best to kick it to the finish. And fortunately for me, I had a great race photographer who caught this shot of me with about a tenth to go (could my quad look more fierce?)

After the race, G met me at the finish line and we snapped this picture.

Overall, the race was fun. Lots of painful fun. And the whole time I kept thinking, "How does anyone race anything longer than a Sprint?" (I cannot express the amount of respect I have for Triathletes.) And even though, I have proved that you don't really need to train to finish a Sprint distance, I am not eager to try it again any time soon.

But in the end, I was really happy with my finishing time, especially considering I was just hoping to break 1:30. And, I'm not going to lie, it was totally awesome to place (here I am with my award - a sweet beach towel)

But, I would kind of like to know what I could do if I actually trained ...