Swim and swim again

I've been back to the grind since my first triathlon.  Results came in at 1:53 overall for a half mile swim (40 minutes), 15 mile bike ride (40 minutes) and 5K run (30 minutes).  I estimate my first transition was about two and a half minutes and my second a minute and a half; the bike mount/dismount including time to/from the ocean added about a little over a quarter mile onto my transition, but that seems typical.  As I said before, ugh on the swim. 

Amazingly, I plugged my info into a calories burned calculator and I burned over 1,200 calories!  In the weeks leading up to the triathlon I kept telling my husband I would be fine to hang out Sunday afternoon as we usually do...  I was deluded!  I was exhausted, cranky and it was all I could do to not fall asleep everytime I sat down. 

Of course, I took off Monday.  Not work, but working out.  I needed it sooo badly.  I wasn't sore, but I was really tired.

Tuesday, back at it.  I swam 1100 meters.

Wednesday I went on a leisurely 10 mile bike ride in the morning and a 3 mile run that evening.  The run was supposed to be a nice recovery jog, but the speed demon inside me (ok, it was really the "let's get this done" voice in my head) caught up and I hit an 8:22 pace.  That was another evening of exhuastion, but overall I felt good.

Took off Thursday and Friday, and Saturday did an easy 6 miles in sprinkling rain and cool temperatures.  It felt great and I felt really great, hitting a 9:45 pace.  This was actually more of a recovery run, which should not be about pace, see Active.com or Runner's World/Times, but I read that if you feel good and you're not out of breath, then you're ok.  I'll take what I can get at this point.

Sunday morning I was dreading.  It was my "rehearsal" for my August triathlon.  Don't get me wrong, I was really, really grateful to have the opportunity to see the course and practice more open water swimming, but I was scared.  In the end, it was fantastic.  What's nice is that this is a 'women only' triathlon and supposedly caters to beginners, which is why they do the rehearsal. Check it out -- I SAID WOMEN ONLY!!

Got up at 6am for an 8am start.  Had a cinnamon raisin bagel with peanut butter and banana and a small cup of coffee.  Took off around 7:30am and met the group at 8am.  We rode our bikes with our gear down to the beach and hooked up with a bunch of others. 

The event organizer did a little talk on organizing your gear and helped us visualize where the racks would be and the entrance/exit for the different legs.  Then, it was time to hit the water.

Here's what the beach looks like on a normal day (actual picture of the beach):

 

 

Here's what it looked like to me (actual picture of the beach during a storm):

 And here's what it really looked like when I was there:

 



 

The mind does amazing things.

 

The water was pretty cold, but very still.  Of course, the buoys weren't set up just yet, but there was a demarcated swimming zone that was about 1/3rd of the course.  Our group of 15 or so waded in hesitantly.  Most of the women wore wetsuits and looked like this (credit to all3sports.com):

 

Whereas I looked something like this (credit to amazon.com) note the pained smile on the model's face accurately reflects what I looked like:

 

It was a true dichotomy of triathlon wear.  I'm too cheap to buy a wetsuit and too lazy to have to bother with it, so I suck it up.

 

Oh yeah, the swim.  It went much better, and I chalk it up to a few things:

 

1.  The beach is protected by a series of islands, so the water was practically still vs. my last experience of choppy swells in true open water.

 

2.  I wore my tinted goggles vs. the last time when I wore clear goggles.  I usually use tinted goggles in the pool, but my husband gave me his pair of clear goggles, and I thought those would be more helpful the day of my triathlon because it was overcast.  The problem with clear goggles in the ocean?  You can't see anything anyway, so I think that freaked me out big time.  At least the effect was muted with the tinted goggles.

 

3.  I wasn't freaking out.  I swam slow and steady, sighted well, and managed to front crawl/freestyle the entire way.

 

I did it!  Now to repeat next Sunday...

 

What's even more awesome?  The bike is very nearly completely flat and the run is entirely flat.  Yay!

 

So, the training continues.

 

Tri 1 is done.

It was bad. 

My biggest takeaway:  I need to swim a lot more.  A LOT MORE.  The swim portion was far and away the most difficult thing I have ever done.  I have been through military bootcamp but that in no way compares to the half mile swim.  Or, should I say, doggie paddle / backstroke.  I was embarassed; I was tired; I was slow.  On the plus side, no one kicked me or swam over me.  There were multiple moments when waves washed over me and I felt like I was going to drown.  It was so bad that there was some 16 year old in a kayak floating alongside me and I convinced myself that he was recording me on his phone and posting to Youtube.  That's completely irrational, but that's where my emotions were in the moment.

I'm really not sure what happened.  I can swim a half mile in the pool, no stopping, without any problems.  I don't do it so quickly, but I can do it in 20 minutes (stop laughing, I never swam before February!).  At the triathlon I probably clocked in at 35 minutes?  My watch read about 25 minutes when I was near the last buoy, so I think that's pretty accurate given my overall time.

What really, really hurts my pride is that I KILLED the bike and the run.  I was not passed by a single person on the bike ride and only one person on the run.  My average biking speed exceeded 20 mph, and at one point I even hit 38 mph!  My average running pace was somewhere around 10 minutes per mile.

And the hill?



Nailed it.  I rode all the way to the top.  This was definitely the hardest part of the course for most of the participants.

So, I finished.  Yes, it was bad, but I finished.

On to the next one, August 18.  There's a run through this Sunday, and I think I will be hitting up the water BIG TIME with a leisurely bike ride and walk through on the run course - the run is a double loop.  Wish me luck and give me all your open water swimming tips.