I Am a Woman of Steel

Remember that one time I did a triathlon? Oh yeah! Way back in May I did the Women of Steel triathlon with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. I've always wanted to do a triathlon and this was the perfect one to start (and end?) with. It was all women so I didn't have to feel intimidated by the men...just the professional women. Though I never really had any contact with them. They got in the pool first and probably finished the entire race before I even finished swimming (we waited in line for about 50 minutes before getting in. There was a lot of women there).

The swim was okay. I felt like I was drowning most of the time because there were people all around me making waves that I choked on. As you can see the swim was in a pool. It was nice that I didn't have to worry about swimming off in some random direction like in a lake. But unlike a lake, where people eventually spread out, there was people crawling all over me the entire time.

The bike was rough at times, only because the loop had some pretty steep hills, which we had to do twice. And it ended on a hill.

The run was also a little miserable. Not because of the distance, but because my feet went numb while biking and were numb for at least half of the 3 miles. It was weird enough to start running with those jello-y biking legs, but then I had to deal with numb feet. I could feel the numbness slowly subside as I ran. First I could feel my heels, then all but my big toe. It was rather uncomfortable. The last time I went biking (a year ago) my feet went numb. Am I just weird?

Despite my numb feet and jello legs, I had a lot of fun. My time wasn't all that bad. I came in at 1 hour 36 minutes. The fastest women in my age group were around 1 hour (this was a 300 m. swim, 12 mi. bike, and 3 mi. run people. Not the longest triathlon you'll ever do). Also, I hardly trained. I did practice swimming a little, but I never actually biked. So...not bad, right?! That may be why I was so shocked when I felt like I had lead legs after biking.

I think nearly 900 women signed up

ready to jump in!

no bike pics. apparently they never saw me on the bike.

I was sad I didn't get a medal, just a lame-o necklace that looked like it was made by a non-crafty person. I'm pretty sure it got thrown away. Who knows, maybe I'll find a triathlon where they give medals to the sprint triathletes (that's right, I'm a triathlete now) and do that one. We'll see...