My First Triathlon: Mission Accomplished!

Okay, I can now breathe a HUGE sigh of relief, sit back and relax, and catch up on the blog now that this huge thing is over. I don't even know where to start. It was just such an incredible, difficult, emotional, amazing day, I have 1000 thoughts running through my head, and am way too tired to put them in any sort of order! My roommate Erin went along on the camp "cheering" bus, and got some great photos for me, I appreciate that so much, because now I have something to post!

Listening to pre-race instructions, and looking calmly at the ocean before the big waves came in ...


The most noteworthy thing of the day was the tsunami-scale waves that decided to pound the shore just as the guy blew the start whistle. Seriously. 15 feet high. No joke. As he was briefing us for the race, we were watching the waves, and they were 'normal' ... we had a chance to get in the water and get wet so our bodies were accustomed to the temperature. Then we all lined up on the beach ready to go. I automatically went to the back of the pack because that's what the slower swimmers do so you're not getting trampled on by all the fast swimmers trying to pass you. As the race starts and we all run into the water, it's normal to have to push through and withstand a few breaking waves until you get past the surf into the open water. What we went through was NOT normal. Suddenly we were getting POUNDED by wave after wave, one 15-foot wall after another.


That's me on the far left of the picture in the white swim cap thinking to myself: Holy fill-in-the-blank! What have we gotten ourselves into?!

One of the people watching from shore said it reminded her of the titanic in the movie when the ship is tipped up verticle and bodies are just free-falling through the air down to the water ... our bodies were getting picked up by these waves and we were just falling off of them, if not getting pulled through them! I would try to push through it, but it was so big and so powerful, it would pull you under, slam you on the bottom of the ocean, then push you back onto shore, cancelling all the effort you had used to get 1/2-way into the ocean. I withstood this about 4-5 times, and threw my hands up in the air, asking God how I'm supposed to get through this? Then I heard the voice of a guy on shore saying "There's one more big one, then you guys are good to go" ... well, actually there were 2 more big ones, but hearing him say that reassured me that there was an end to this hell, and that I could do this. But with all of my fear of swimming and the ocean, once I got past those walls-of-terror, swimming seemed like such an easy task! Went out 200 yards, circled the gigantic bouey and swam back... faced a similar but not as drastic pounding when coming into shore, but since it was "coming home" there was light at the end of the tunnel that pulled me through. Ran in, put my shorts/socks/shoes on, and ran the mile on the beach. uneventful. easy (on the packed sand). Then had to run what was really another 1/4-mile through the deep soft sand to get to the street and hop on the bikes. That was the next-most difficult part, getting through that deep sand when your legs and your lungs are screaming that they have nothing more to give.


Running ... Now that the swimming was over, I've never been so happy to be running in all my life!!


Once I made it to my bike, threw on my team t-shirt and helmet and I was off. It was such a relief to be at that point, I wasn't in much of a hurry. The bike route took us onto the Navy base, and on a frontage road that was bordered on one side by the ocean and the other side by the end of the runway. Right as I was passing by the end of the runway, a huge C-141 took off right over my head. Seemed like I could reach out and touch it. It was quite an emotional moment for me. This was a beautiful area, so I told myself to take time to take it all in.


All Done! I can smile again! :)

We had such a huge support group that came from the camp, it was so much fun to cross the finish line to all the cheers and the high-5's. The divisions are split up by age, so being the "old" one of my team, I was competing in the 30-40 group. All of the rest of my team was competing in the 20-30 group.




Anyway, fancy that, I got 3rd place for my age group and won a bronze medal!! I can put that with all of Dan's wrestling medals! :P We all got a participation medal too, so I was walking around jingly all morning with my medals.