My First Triathlon

Its official. I finished my first, and possibly only, triathlon.

And I just want to say it was waaaaayyyy harder than I thought it was going to be.

The weekend started with Friday off, remember how Mark and I were both off work? We decided, well I decided, it would be a good weekend to do some painting so Friday we went and picked out paint for our bathroom and master bedroom. I figured we'd have it done by the end of the night but boy was I wrong! The project went downhill quickly as we discovered the whole plaster in our bathroom needed to be scraped and sanded before we could repaint it... Anyways, long story short, I left Mark to finish the project that I wanted to do while I traipsed off to Williamsburg, VA first on Saturday for the race expo and checking in of the bikes and then again early Sunday morning for the race itself.

He worked non-stop all weekend to give me the bathroom that I wanted while I was off finishing a bucket list race. He's a keeper for sure. : )

So what about the Triathlon???

Well, for starters I thought I was going to die. Literally.

The race started out with a 1 mile swim in the James River. The water was pretty warm but the temperature was still low enough to wear a wet suit. (I had rented a wetsuit the day before at the expo.) As soon as we got down to the beach to await our wave start I began to feel sick to my stomach. The large buoy's sitting out in the water that lined our course seemed much much further than I had ever swam before.

I started to get really anxious but tried to feign confidence the best that I could. Thankfully Missy was there to help encourage me! It was a beach start, so as they sounded the gun for our age group we headed into the water with the large crowd of blue swim capped females. As we got waist deep in the water I looked over, waved goodbye to Missy, knowing it would probably be the last time I saw her until the finish line, and started into my swim. Within seconds I knew I was in trouble. The water was choppy and the current was strong. Every time I lifted my head to breath I got a mouthful of water. People were all around me kicking and splashing past me. Suddenly my wet suit felt like it was constricting my chest and not allowing my lungs to take in air. Every 2 strokes I had to lift my head to try to breath. Unfortunately things continued to go downhill very fast those first 10 minutes. Before I even made it to the first buoy turn I had to stop at one of rescue paddle boarders to figure things out. I unzipped the top of my wetsuit which helped me breath a little easier and as I looked at the rest of course still left to swim I seriously considered my options. I couldn't believe I was actually thinking about quitting. I've never thought quitting to be an option, but in the middle of the James River, as I struggled to breathe, I was afraid quitting was exactly what was going to end up happening. In fact all around me quite a few people were being pulled out of the water into emergency boats. (I found out after the race that the water made the swim extremely difficult for even the professional athletes out on the course.) After saying a quick prayer I decided to just keep swimming. I wouldn't quit. I might drown lol but I wasn't going to quit! I eventually made it out of the water after 40 minutes (which actually wasn't as bad as I was expecting, Missy swam hers in 36 minutes, only 4 minutes faster than me which I was happy about!) But she was much quicker during her transitions so I never caught up to her.

The next leg of the race was the Bike.

24 miles of biking up and down hills. My quads were on FIRE! Not to mention other unmentionable places started getting very sore... haha this was definitely my slowest leg of the race... it took me about 1 hour and 32 minutes. I hated the uphills but just kept thanking God for the down hills. I was so so happy to make it to the second transition but as soon as I got off my bike my legs forgot how to walk/run normally lol. I'm pretty sure I waddled my way to my bikes rack spot. I switched my helmet for my visor and then I was off to finish the last leg of the race!

Only 6.2 miles to run, no big deal right? I mean after all I've completed 1/2 and full marathons. 6 miles is easy peasy. HA! The first 2 miles were the weirdest run ever!!! I just couldn't get my legs moving in a good rhythm, really I couldn't get them moving normally haha. My right calf and medial quad/knee were feeling pretty tight and painful. I stopped to stretch them out which helped a lot and by mile 3 I was feeling better and keeping up a better pace. I did run in to Missy as she was looping back to finish the run, she was happy to see that I hadn't given up yet ; )

 

As I came up to the end of the run it was exciting to see Missy there cheering me on. She got some pictures of me too so I was happy about that! They had a pretty sweet finisher chute where you pretty much finished all by yourself as the announcer called out your name. We get a free finisher photo too, but it hasn't come in yet! They had quite a lot of "professionals" racing the half iron man course and because they pretty much just ran the olympic course twice they were running/biking along side of me  passing me with ridiculous speed all day. But it was cool that I was on the same course as they were!

After we finished we sat in these compressive sleeves that are supposed to help with muscle recovery. It was free and felt goooood. Although, getting back up after sitting down in the low chair was a bit of a challenge haha

I'm glad I finished it. It was definitely challenging but totally worth it. Its nice to see it checked off of my race bucket list, but its probably the only race I've ever done where I've crossed the finish line and thought "I don't think I really want to do this again!" Normally the excitement of the finish, the medal and the feeling of accomplishment pump me up and make me feel like I could do it all over again the next weekend. But not so much this time. I mean now that its a few days later and the fear of drowning from the swim is a fading memory I can kinda sort of see myself maaayyybbeee doing another one. Maybe. But I don't know. I'm definitely done with it for now. :)

Happy Summer

Today (Yep, its 12am) is the first official day of Summer.

How fitting is it that neither Mark or I have to work tomorrow?!

My supervisor at work gives us the opportunity to rotate schedules with each other since we work pretty long days sometimes.  We have to make sure there are a certain number of therapists there in the late afternoon/evening and so many there for our early (6:45am) patients so its inevitable that some schedules are a little better than others. For instance, some people end up coming in to work late Mondays and get off early on Fridays. Which ends up being really nice! Thankfully, we each get a turn at something along those lines! We switch it up every Fall, Spring and Summer to keep things fair. It just so happens that I worked late on Fridays during the Fall and Spring semester this past year so when our Summer schedules came up, I was next in line for the early Fridays! Even better? Because its the Summer and kids can come to therapy all day long and not just before/after school, we are allowed to have even more flexibility in creating our schedule options. Some of us do 2 half days and 3 long days and some of us do 4 10's. I like the 4 10's during the summer because it means I can get a whole day to oh... say... go to the beach! And bonus! My day off gets to be on FRIDAY! 3 day weekends all summer long!

Can it get any better?

Why yes. Yes it can.

Mark gets every other Friday off! I mean, he gets this all year long because at his work they do what they call a rotating day off (RDO) where they work 9 hour days so every other week they get a day off and he some how managed to get his RDO on a Friday when he first started working there. (Pretty sweet right?)

Anyways... by now you've realized just how happy I am that today is the first day of Summer! Every other Friday my man and I will be enjoying time together. We'll be doing everything from traveling and working on home projects to just chilling out on the beach and training our puppy to come when she's called... ; )

But for tomorrow, our first order of Summer time business will start with a nice, long sleep. Alarm clocks will exist only in the form of the pup wanting her breakfast.

Which usually looks a little something like this...

...and I usually can't take focused pictures early in the morning ; )

Happy Summer!

Open Water Swimming

When I first started my triathlon training I wasn't really concerned about practicing the swimming portion out in the open water. I felt like I was a pretty strong swimmer and I read about people who waited until race day for their first open water swim (OWS). I figured I could pull that off too. Well first of all, when I started training in a pool with actual lanes I realized I wasn't as strong of a swimmer as I thought! Secondly, I am so glad I had the chance to do an OWS today.

I met my co-worker and triathlon training buddy/coach at the Chesapeake Bay this morning. She's done several triathlons, her most recent a half iron man just last weekend, so this swim was a walk in the park for her. I was excited to just get out there and try it, we've been swimming over a mile in the pool so really my only concern was how cold the water was going to be! Thankfully she brought me a wet suit so I didn't even have to worry about the cold.




We waded out in to the water about waist deep and decided what marker we would aim for, about a 1/2 mile up the beach. I started out a head of her, and I knew we weren't going to race but at the same time I didn't want her to pass me! So I started out fast. My feet kicking hard and my arms pulling and it took about, oh, 5 seconds before my heart started to race because I realized I couldn't see A THING! In the pool theres a black line to follow to keep your self in a straight line, in the bay, theres just greenish, foggy water with the occasional black speck floating in front of your goggles! I tried not to panic and just kept swimming on. Trying to figure out how my rhythm of breathing and sighting (looking up out of the water to make sure you're still headed towards the target) was going to work. It didn't take me long to start tiring out, and then all of a sudden, as my arms were paddling and my feet were kicking I realized I must look like a helpless turtle just screaming out for a shark to come and eat me! Seriously.  I've never really been scared of sharks getting me when I'm in the ocean here in hampton roads, but today a totally irrational fear of being eaten by a shark completely over took me! I tried to force myself to stay calm and just focus on breathing... lifting my head every 3 strokes like in the pool. It seemed to be working for a while, that is until a piece of seaweed got wrapped around my foot and my arm knocked into something solid and immovable!

I literally had a mild heart attack! (Which is two in one week because I saw a funnel cloud during a tornado warning at work on Monday night - these heart attacks can't be good for my health!) Anyways, I started panicking. I started flipping around and pretty quickly realized I was in about knee deep water and the immovable object that my hand was actually the sand. Yea, as in the bottom of the bay. Woops! I had swum a little too close to the shore trying to make sure I didn't swim too far away from shore. Because there were probably more sharks out in the deeper water... Once Missy got to me, we rested for a few minutes and I shared my shark story. She laughed at me and assured me there were no sharks in the bay haha so we turned ourselves around and headed the 1/2 mile back.

I felt much more confident on the way back. My goal was to keep a better pace, find a consistent breathing/sighting rhythm, and think less about a shark biting my leg off. I think I did pretty good at the first 2, the last one was still a little bit of a challenge.

Anyways...I have a little over a week until my first triathlon. Thankfully we'll be swimming in the James River where I'm 99.9% sure there aren't any sharks. Hopefully all other river creatures will be scared away by the multiple people in the river splashing ahead of and behind me! Which the multitudes of people may produce another irrational fear of being drowned by people swimming over me, but... I'll cross that bridge when I come to it!

Tough Mudder

Last weekend I finished one of the most unique races I've ever done. I was going to say the toughest race I've ever done, but I think the marathon is still winning in that category!

Have you ever heard of Tough Mudder? It's a 10-12 mile race full of obstacles inspired by the British Military special forces. Sounds awesome right?

I drove up to Pennsylvania where the race was with 2 of my coworkers and a long time friend of mine. I was excited about the race but not excited that I was leaving my husband again after a week of being gone and having to get back in the car after doing so much traveling the week before. Thankfully my husband is supportive of me and all of my bucket list races that I want to do this summer!

I was out on the course with my team of 4 for about 3 and 1/2 hours. No shade. Running (sometimes walking) up and down hills for 11 miles. Not to mention going over insane obstacles. We scaled 12-15 foot wooden walls, jumped off a +15 foot wall into freezing water, crawled through a series of tunnels in mud and water, carried large, heavy logs as a team, swung across monkey bars and rings over freezing water (i definitely fell into the water on this one!) and crawled and ran through live wires emitting strong electrical shocks if you hit the wrong one! Does it sound crazy? Why in the world would I do that?! Even as I list it all out it sounds ridiculous! It was hard, no doubt about it. It challenged me mentally (I'm a tiny bit scared of heights, so heights without any safety netting on those walls was definitely a mental struggle!) and physically, but I had a blast. And Tough Mudder emphasizes that this is an event, not a race. Everyone helps everyone. We lifted each other up over the walls and I had people I didn't even know pull me up over the dreaded "Everest" half pipe. Even when I missed it the first time, they stayed and helped until I made it up and over. No one cares about their time, everyone is a team encouraging each other to finish.

But still... why would I do this? I think its because every once in a while its good to face fears, push your body hard and complete things with a team. It builds character. :)

 Unfortunately we didn't get many pictures of us out on the course : / and the ones we did get from the professional photographers weren't worth the money they were asking for them. But here are a few from before and after...

My team. 

Yes. They wrote our numbers on our foreheads and our arms!

After finishing! We got our orange head bands!

The orange head bands are the medals for this race.

They're never sold, only earned by completing this event.

I was pretty pumped after finishing. 

Right at the finish line is the electro shock obstacle. I got zapped right at the end smack dab between my shoulder blades (OUCH!) and as I reacted to the sting of the shock I lost my footing and pretty much fell face first in the mud! What a way to finish the muddiest run ever! I would pay money if I found a picture of that, haha.

Tough Mudder Finishers!

For one final hoorah we all jumped up on the back of this wall for a picture!

There was nothing on the back of this wall to help us, we just jumped up and hung there until the picture was over. We're all smiling but I probably would've fallen off the wall backwards if the guy taking this picture wasn't awesome and snapped it in like 5 seconds.

I was so sore the next day. Not to mentioned scraped and bruised up from the obstacles. But the experience was totally worth it. I know I said it was a "bucket list" race, but I would totally do it again... if the race comes closer to home and requires less traveling that is. ; )

My next "bucket list" race is coming up at the end of June.

Rev3 Triathlon here I come!

Prince Edward Island

Summer is off to a swinging start around here. We're not even mid-way through June and I feel like I've done so much already! I literally have been gone every weekend (and a whole week at the end of May) since May 23rd.  It might take a while to fill you in on everything, but I'll do my best.

First up? The Prince Edward Island Trip!

In about 16 hours I drove my grandma, cousin Anna, and two sisters up to Massachusetts. Thats right, 16 hours... it was only supposed to take 12! I chose a route that took us through D.C. and New York City, in the rain, during evening rush hours. Not my brightest idea, but on the bright side we got to see some national monuments and my sister got to see the NYC skyline for the first time in her life.
 And we did eventually make to Mass. at about midnight. {I thought my rear end was going to have a permanent cramp from all that sitting... but it seems to have returned to normal :)}

We left early the next morning with my Aunt Linda, Emma, Anna and grandma and headed to Bangor, Maine.

We enjoyed some delicious seafood cuisine at a local restaurant - I had to get some sort of Lobster while I was in Maine! I wasn't brave enough for the whole "animal in a shell that looks like it will come alive any second" type of Lobster dish, but I did get some Lobster pasta. :)

We stayed the night in Maine and then crossed the border into Canada! We drove for about 7 hours through Canadian wilderness until crossing the longest bridge in the world over icy waters on to PEI. The landscape there was somewhat of a dream. So many shades of green contrasting agains the deep red soil. Hills that seemed to roll right into beaches. Farms, that when looking down on them from on top of a hill, appeared so perfect it was as if some one reached down and hand placed the tree lines, houses and gardens. It was breath taking. 

We stayed in a little cottage that was all about Anne of Green Gables. Have you ever read that story? It's fictional, but the writer Lucy M. Montgomery also grew up on PEI and we got to tour many of the places that she lived that inspired the story that us girls loved so much growing up! 

Here are some of my favorite photos from the trip: 

It was a lovely, lovely trip catching up with my Aunt and Grandma and my two truly beautiful cousins. We always enjoy our time together! I've often pondered what my life would have been like if my mother and her sisters hadn't chosen the paths that they did - having large, homeschooled families. Or if they hadn't made an effort through out all of our growing up years to get us kids together and keep our families close so that we would consider our cousins to be some of our very best friends even into adulthood. What a blessing! 

I got home from my PEI trip on Thursday, May 30th, said hello to my husband after a long week away from him. Then got up Friday the 31st for work, said good bye to my husband and left work at lunch time with some coworkers to head back up North for some more craziness!  

But more on that later. : )