Triathlon Time

My first ever Sprint Triathlon

Saturday March 8th, 2014

Okay so I've always wanted to do a triathlon and I made it one of my new years resolutions to actually do it this year, and finally decided to start training for it around the middle of January I think. And I called Paige up and told her about it and she said she'd do it with me yay!! Then we checked in with each other every time we trained. 
I was doing pretty good and then 8 days out from the triathlon I had a sharp pain in the outer side of my left knee ( my left was supposed to be my good knee) when I was jogging one day and come to find out, I injured my IT band. So I didn't do anymore training all of the 8 days up til the tri and I went to physical therapy to try to help it. Then I got super discouraged and depressed cuz I thought I might not be able to do the triathlon because my knee was just really stiff and painful and it made me sad because I had been training and really wanted to do it. I might have also eaten a lot of chocolate cake during this time ;) My sweet hubby gave me a priesthood blessing though and I felt a lot better after that. Thanks hun :) I also iced, heated, massaged, stretched, and foam rolled my IT band like crazy in hopes that it would help it heal.
At physical therapy my therapist finally gave me the go ahead to participate in the triathlon the Thursday before the triathlon. Yay! And they even gave me some blue athletic tape to tape up my IT band for the bike and run that matched my tennis shoes. Awesome.

 That Thursday night Paige came down from Rexburg. We had a good old home cooked dinner and then Me, Paige, and Pat played monopoly until 1in the morning. Pat won. I lost even though Paige bought a crappy property from me for $300 dollars ha ha ha , that was my favorite move of the game probably. Then we slept in on Friday and found Paige a bike for the triathlon. That's always a good thing to do the day before a triathlon right? ha ha. Then Paige and I took our bikes for a little ride around USU campus and the cemetery. My parents also came down Friday night and we all went out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse. Mmm it was de-lish. Then we came home and went to bed. 
For some ridiculous reason I woke up at 2:45 in the morning and could not go back to bed for the life of me. Then we all finally got up at 4am and Paige and I ate, and drank a bunch of water so we could be hydrated for the race. Then we got everything packed up and ready to go. Pat helped load the bikes in the truck :) And here is a really bad picture of us.

Who looks good for a 4 am wakeup call anyways? ha ha

 We got to Honeyville around 5:30am and on the drive in we could see all the signs they set up along the road that said like 8 miles, 7 miles. . . ect. And we saw a pretty good sized hill and Paige and I both were like "What? We have to ride our bikes up that?!" Then we got our race packets and numbers and they marked our numbers on both arms and our age on one calf. I was 569 and Paige was 568. It was super cold too I couldn't wait for the sun to come up. I was sooo glad I brought gloves. Brrr! In our packets we got two signs that had our numbers on and we knew we were supposed to pin one on our shirts or whatever but we didn't know what to do with the second one so we just watched everyone else then we finally figured out we were supposed to put it on our bikes. Ha ha. Duh! It was great. 

Paige is ready to go :) You can see the steam from the hot springs lap pool in the background too

 

Setting up our bikes in the transition area.

Also this Triathlon was a little bit different than others because you bike first, then run, then finished in their hot springs lap pool with the swimming. 
Here we are all legit and official with our race numbers

 Heres some pictures of the pretty mountains and the hot springs and the finish line. I was so glad the sun was starting to rise. 

The finish line

Then it was time to start! I was super nervous and I had no feeling in my feet or hands because they were cold!  You were supposed to start based on your estimated completion time of how fast you would bike the 13.1 miles, so Paige and I just hung out towards the back because we figured we would be on the slower side. We weren't even the worse prepared there, someone forgot their bike helmet and had to see if anyone had a spare. You are disqualified if you don't wear a helmet. So that made us feel a little better.
So hanging towards the back might have been a bad idea. They started one biker off every 15 seconds but it kind of took forever. Oh well. I went first and then Paige came after me. I started out goin good and strong and then I got to the first mile marker and I was like "What I've only gone 1 mile?! This  might take awhile." But it was a pretty morning and quite peaceful actually. I like how they started everyone because it wasn't super crowded that way. I passed 4 people on the bike but 2 of them were like 65 year old women so I don't know if that really counts, good for them for doing a triathlon though! I didn't even get off  my bike to go up some of the hills, however I didn't pedal the whole time, I will admit I coasted when I could. I also kind of pulled a thigh muscle about 3/4th of the way through the biking part, I think it was because I was so cold and my muscles were cold even though I had been biking for a bit. And I saw Paige after the halfway part when I turned around to come back, it was fun to wave at each other. :) Then I came back and you had to ride through the parking lot to get back to the transition area and there was this stupid car in my way but I finally got around it. Then headed back out for the run. I still couldn't feel my fingers and I couldn't feel my toes until about a mile into the run ha ha. My run was really slow compared to my training times because I had to keep stopping and walking when  my IT band and knee would act up and start to hurt, so I just kind of did jogging/walking intervals I would jog til  my IT band hurt and then walk, and then jog again. It felt sooo slow and the people passing me were all like "Come on you can do it." and I was just thinking "Yes I know I can I just have an injury lol" I didn't really get out of breath for the run because I couldn't really jog for that long but oh well, it actually felt good the last half mile so I was able to jog the last half mile straight through yay! Then came the swim. I got over to the lap pool and it wasn't crowded so that was nice. I swam about 2 laps until I was already tired. I am a horrible swimmer actually. So then I backstroked, sidestroked, and doggie paddled just to finish the swim lol. The water was pretty warm and I was pretty fatigued by then so it was hard, and it was in a mineral pool so the water was orange and it was really hard to see through. I even hit my head on the wall once. Oops. Then I got out of the pool and ran through the finish line! Yay!!! I did it!! 
So I decided to just sit and soak in the hot springs and wait for Paigie. Then while I was waiting they were giving out the awards and they said Women's Sprint Triathlon then they announced my age group and the girl who got 2nd place. And her time was slower than mine so I thought to myself "Heck I did it faster than that." Then they announced Women's Sprint Triathlon first place and said my name!!!! I was like what?!!! Are you sure? It was awesome. I wasn't expecting any award at all because my run was so slow. I was totally shocked! Then I waited for Paige and cheered her on for the swim and then my parents got there and we all stayed and soaked in the hot springs for awhile it had turned into such a beautiful warm sunny day. I loved it. And of course we need some flexing pictures because we felt pretty hardcore and were just glad we both were able to do the triathlon and finish :)

 

First place!!! Wahoo!!!!!

Copyright lucidimagesut.com

Copyright lucidimagesut.com

Our bikes

Our race numbers

Yay we did it!! I'm sooooo proud of us! And I know Paige isn't flexing as hard as she can in this pic because when we have arm wrestling competitions they last for like 5 min and she has more muscle than she is showing ;)

Not super fast, but it was enough. I'm still just glad I was able to do it.

 And we had to go out to Olive Garden afterwards and eat some serious food. I was starving by the time we got there!!!

 I'm so glad we were both able to do the triathlon and have this fun experience together. And I'm so glad that my knee/leg was able to do alright and I'm glad that Heavenly Father is aware of the little things in life that really aren't that important but are important to us individually. I feel so super blessed :)