The weekend

This weekend I participated in two races: Tribal Sprint Triathlon and Run for Vania.

The Tribal Sprint Triathlon started at 6:15am about 1.5 hours from my house, which meant a very early rise for me. Usually I wake up and am ready to go on race day, but the entire drive there I kept contemplating turning around and going back to bed. I could faintly hear my bed calling "come back, come back" all the way to Lake Pleasant. But I made it to the lake around 5am, which did mean getting up at 3:30am--the earliest I've ever risen for a race. At that hour, the sun was rising and casting a beautiful hue of colors across the sky and turned the lake pink. It was a breathtaking sight as I walked my bike into transition. However, I think the back of my eyelids are also a beautiful sight at 5am. I can't decide what I would like more: a beautiful sunrise or extra sleep.

The swim started out badly. I got knocked in the face twice and so my goggles kept coming off and I had to tread water for a while fixing my goggles. I kept getting water into my right eye and it made it turn red and my contact tore. So my swim took about 5 minutes longer than it should. The bike course was fun...straight up and straight down hill. But then we did something different than I've ever done in a triathlon. Transition 2 was in a completely different place. We biked to some unknown street in the desert, hopped off our bikes, gave them to a volunteer that took them and called out our name for a garbage containing our run gear. Another volunteer handed us the garbage bag and we took off our biking gear and put that into the bag and put on our running shoes to head back to where we started. Very different experience. You missed people cheering for you back into transition.

The run portion was a lot of fun. It was a trail run over rocks and cliffs through cactus and dirt. The terrain of rocks everywhere brought back memories of Antarctica, only much hotter this time.

The run I felt went okay for me and I thought I did good, but then I saw my results and was rather disappointed. I really enjoyed the race and felt like I was in better shape, but the extra 5 minutes on the swim really hurt me. Better luck next time.

On Sunday I woke up at 5:45am for a race that started at 6:30am. It was just a 5K charity race to raise money for a girl named Vania who was in a bad bike accident. Having been injured myself in a bike accident, I know it is hard to come back and her injuries were significant. Her training group, First Wave Tri, was there volunteering all throughout the course. Way to show support for one of your own! It was really nice to see.

I also did an hour long swim of a pre-set schedule and an hour bike ride on top of the races. I was certain I did so much better than my results showed in my triathlon. I am quite concerned now that I am not getting better. I feel like a stagnant triathlete most days and this race confirmed it. My time doesn't show my transition times, so it looks like I took longer to swim, bike and run when I really swam faster, biked and ran faster, but still not fast enough.

While trying to stay awake throughout the day, I watched Casino Royale on my DVR. I just forwarded to my favorite parts. Daniel Craig is such a stud. I would very much like to be Mrs. Jenny Craig.