Sunday, February 26, 2012

Indoor Triathlon Race Recap

I'm actually not known to do race recaps for my runs.  I think it's because this started as a healthy eating/weight loss blog and partially turned into a running blog.  But since I did something completely different than just running, I thought a race recap was appropriate.

I decided to take part in a very small indoor triathlon with my hair stylist Carol and a group of her running friends.  I've always wanted to do a triathlon but they scare me a little.  This triathlon is what I considered a "baby" triathlon.  In no ways do I consider myself a triathlete for completing this!  It was a very structured timed event.  You got 10 minutes for swimming, a 10 minute transition, 20 minutes on the stationary bike, a 5 minute transition and a 15 minute run.  But I thought this was a good way to "get my feet wet" before doing a "real" triathlon.

The night before I was actually kind of nervous!  I don't know why.  I knew I could easily do each event so it's not like I won't complete it.  I went to bed early just because I was really tired.  I had a dream that night that I was up against 2 girls in the pool (that's it!) and they told us we had to do the backstroke.  Now, I was on the swim team in high school for only 1 year, my junior year, to help out because they didn't have enough people.  Since I hadn't swam the first two years and was now swimming against varsity, I was a lot slower than everyone else.  And they usually stick the worst people on the backstroke (at least in my case).  So I always got put on backstroke (or in the relays, obviously).  I think this is where the backstroke came into play in my dream!

So in the dream, they said we had to compete in the backstroke.  The other two girls didn't know how to swim the backstroke!  (Haha!).  Lucky for me...I did!  And I creamed the other two girls in the backstroke!  I woke up around 5:30 and kind of chuckled at my dream!  If only this were the case!  lol.  But I didn't have to get up until 7:30 so I went back to sleep.

I got all my stuff together and off I went.  It was nice because this was very local and only around 15 minutes from my house.  I got my swag and my lane assignment.

Swag bag

Lane/Machine Assignment wrist band

The free stuff in the bag
For a cheapy race, the swag bag was kind of nice.  Lots of free samples.  I always love the granola bar and energy samples!

I met up with the girls who were shopping in the store (of course!!).  Finally we got changed and all ready for the swim and headed to the pool.  The pool was 25 yards and they counted lengths of the pool.  And if we pushed off and then the whistle blew signaling the end...that last length counted even if we didn't swim it.  As long as we pushed off, the next length counted.  After the person working the event took pictures of us in the pool (I do not like having pictures taken in a bathing suit! lol), we geared up to start.  I am hopefully going to get the pictures this lady took emailed to me...but I don't have them yet.  I have a few pictures a family member of one of the girls took though.
Before the start, I'm in the light blue and black suit in the middle.
When the whistle blew, I started out fast!  And after two lengths, I was tired!  lol.  I knew I needed to slow it up a little.  10 minutes isn't very long but I wanted to keep a good pace.  I'm a fairly slow swimmer.  I knew from the few practice swims I had earlier in the month that I would not make 20 lengths in 10 minutes.  So my goal was to get as close to that as possible.  They announced when the time was half up.  I was about 9.5 lengths in.  When I was around 17 lengths in, I knew I just wanted to get to the end of the wall and push off just in case the end timer sounded.  I wanted to get the extra length in.  So I just kept thinking, "Get to the end and push off!"  I knew it was getting close.  After I was finishing length 18 and was about to push off, I heard the guys yelling, "GO! GO! GO!"  And I pushed off and about a second later, the whistle sounded to complete the swim portion.  So even though I didn't swim that 19 length, it counted! Lucky me!  They clocked me at 475 yards.  Good? Bad?  I don't know.  I knew that I did good for myself.  I also knew that out of the 5 of us, 2 girls swam faster (525 yards) and 2 girls swam slower (400 and 425 yards).  I was happy enough with my distance.

Then we went to change out of our suits and headed to the bikes.  I forgot my headphones and that made for a very boring 20 minute bike ride!  Not much to say about the bike.  I tried to keep my RPM's up and did well for the distance for me, 6.60 miles.  I must say, the equipment in this gym was very new and very nice!  The seats on the bike were comfortable and it was very smooth to ride!

The first person is my hair stylist Carol with a magazine with Johnny Depp (her favorite).



  I'm second on the bike.


After the bikes, I had 5 minutes.  I went to get my knee straps which I left in the locker room.  I stretched out a bit and headed to the treadmill.  The girls had started early but I was taking my time as this wasn't counting against me at all and I figured I could catch my breath a little bit.

I hopped on the treadmill and off I went.  Actually...I hate treadmills for a few reasons.  One reason is...it takes about 10 seconds to get up to the speed you want to run at!  I was saying out loud..."Come on! Get moving!"  I was losing precious time! lol.  My goal was to do some speed intervals.  Even my recovery speed was going to be higher than normal though.  All I needed to do was run for 15 minutes!  But I was nervous that if I ran on a speed to high for me, I would get so tired that I would have to lower the speed too much later.  So I was a little conservative but still tried to push it.  After a minute warm up at about 9:50 to get my feet under me, I decided to do 2 minutes at about 9:13 or 9:05 pace and 1 minute at 8:34.  I would see how that felt and decide from there the rest of the run.  Well that seemed to work out ok.  Since I didn't have my headphones, the intervals made the time go fast and gave me something to focus on.  With the last three minutes, I figured I could push more so I ran 2 minutes on 8:57 pace and the final minute on a 8:05 pace.  Yeah I was all over the place but I thought it would be better than just trying to run a straight pace and poop out later.  My overall miles for the 15 minutes was 1.66.  I felt just "Eh...it was ok".  I wish I had picked it up a few times earlier or ran longer for a little bit on the higher pace.  But overall it was ok.  I did beat all the other 4 girls that were there with me in the running!  Nice!

Since I got on the treadmills last, I was the last one off and immediately they wanted to take all of our pictures!  I'm red in the face, my hair is a mess from the swimming portion.
After the Triathlon. Sporting our medals.
I feel that I always look like a linebacker when I take photos with people!  I'm bigger and taller than just about everyone!  Oh well...

Close up of the medal!
Even though this was a small little triathlon and really means nothing in the grand scheme of things, I was pretty pleased with my performance.  You still don't realize how tired you get from one event to the other.  It was a lot of fun. I would definitely do this again!  It's good for those that show "interest" in a triathlon but don't think they can ever do one!  This was a lot of fun and may give you courage to sign up for another triathlon!  Which of course I did!  Also, after receiving the results, I found out I got 2nd place in my age group for females!  Ok, it was only out of 9 girls in that group but I didn't care!  Not too bad.  Also, I was really close to the first place position but that girl creamed me in the run (she ran 1.93 miles in 15 minutes).

A sprint triathlon is in my future.  I wasn't going to do a triathlon this year with my hefty two marathon goal but I know a few people that started talking about do one and decided, "Why not?"  So I signed up for a triathlon in August.  It's two weeks after a half marathon, so it won't interfere with that.  And it's 2 months before the Chicago Marathon, so it really won't interfere with that.  Sometimes I think I'm a little crazy.  But you only live once.

A little side note.  Lent.  I'm Catholic but I really don't go to church or even follow many of the rules of lent or anything.  On another side note, I feel that God just wants me to be a good person!  lol.  So that's what I try to do.  Normally I don't give anything up either and I eat meat on Friday's too.  I know, I know.  We always did at home.  In fact, it seems that I always gravitate towards meat on Friday's and would forget about Lent anyway!  This year, since I failed at not eating candy for the entire month of February, I decided to give up candy and ice cream for Lent.  So far, so good!

**Also, Maggie from Mag Mile Runner is having raffling off some great stuff in order to raise money for her charity for the American Cancer Society.  Click here for the link to her page and donate.  Granted, it ends today and I should have blogged about this sooner!  Sorry Maggie! But I'm all up for donating to a good cause and also trying to win some good stuff!  You could always donate even if you aren't entered in the raffle!

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