Triathlon

I have been training for a sprint triathlon the past few months and it is coming up this weekend.

And I am nervous!

I am not a swimmer. I am not a cyclist. I like running, or rather jogging, but after swimming and riding my bike, running is whole new ball of wax.

So why am I doing this?

Well, I have a neighbor who wanted to do it, so I agreed to do it with her making her promise she would be patient with my swimming and wait for me. I signed up for a swim training class and then my friend decided that she wouldn't be able to do it because of the day it was on. So, I thought "Well I have already signed up for the swim class, atleast I will get some good exercise." Then one of my good friend's teenage son decided to do it again (he did it last year) and needed to train, so he signed up for the class and we decided to train together.

Maybe another reason is that I am trying to prove to myself that I am in better shape in my 30's than I was in my 20's. A pre-midlife crisis thing or something.

So here I am the week of the race.

The swim training went well. I took two months of it. It began the beginning of February in a heated outdoor pool. Thankfully, I had borrowed a wetsuit, because it was still a bit chilly. Jathan got me a new pair of goggles and my first swim cap, so I atleast looked like I knew what I was doing. The first day of class I looked around at the other students trying to figure out if they were as new to this as I was. I saw a few with swim team jackets on, not a good sign. Then the teachers gave us a card and asked us to write out our goals. I wondered if writing "to finish the swim portion of the triathlon without dying" was a good goal to write. But I decided that I would just write "to finish in a reasonable amount of time". Since I am not a swimmer, I have no idea what a reasonable amount of time really is. My real goal was #1 to live through it and #2 not to be the very last to finish. So swim class begin. After swimming 8 lengths freestyle, 4 lengths with a kick board, 4 with a pull buoy (a flotation to device to get you to use your arms only), and 4 more freestyle, I thought I survived a good work out. Then I found out that was just the warm up! Several days, I left class not sure if I would be able to use my arms again. And a few times feeling like I was going to hyperventilate after doing sprints again and again and again with seconds between to rest, but I really improved and have to say that I enjoy swimming. Towards the end of the class we had a day that I thought I was back at the beginning feeling like I was going to die. The swim instructor told me that she was pushing us that day because we had gotten comfortable at our new level so she wanted to push us to the next one. My thought was, "I know that I am not going to win this thing, but I do want to live to participate in it!" But I made it through that workout too.

We will see how this weekend goes. If I don't post for a while, you will know what happened, so you can send flowers. Just kidding.