Sunday, August 21, 2016

The Triathlon Without a Cool Name

Yes, that is the very awesome and original title of our triathlon, which I came up with myself.
Two years ago, some friends and I decided to do a triathlon. That we made up. We had around 12 people and it was a blast! Then most of the girls involved moved away (including me.) But this year I had enough people interested that we decided to have another and make it an annual event!
The response was much bigger this time, since we opened it up to anyone through word of mouth, and of course it was free since it was just for fun! We did a sprint distance - 500m swim, 9 mile bike, 5K run. We had about 30 participants.
[Too many to fit in one photo!]

The night before, I drove the course with a friend to look for the turns we wanted to mark, but we were hit with a torrential thunderstorm, so we couldn't mark the sidewalks with chalk or the street posts with signs, let alone even walk into Price Chopper to buy Gatorade without getting drenched and freezing cold! This ironically followed an entire week of 90+ degree weather. We woke up Saturday morning to a balmy 60 degrees! 

Brooklyn insisted that she wanted to go with me, so I woke her up at 6 and we loaded up bikes and gear and drove to the pool. Oh, except socks. I did not load up my socks. My friend had to send her husband to bring me a pair of her own! Who forgets socks going to a triathlon??? Me, apparently. Brooklyn proved to be a huge help. She ran little errands for me while we tried to set up, drew me an extra arrow sign, and when I started, I handed her the camera. She is a natural photographer with quite an artistic eye, which was a great improvement over the pictures I usually take, which look like this.

She took hundreds of pictures. As most moms can relate, I never see pictures of myself. I'm usually the one behind the camera! It was so interesting and even inspiring to me to see myself through her eyes. 













[Then she was left behind, wrapped in my sweatshirt on a chair on the pool deck while we biked and ran for over an hour!]

I have to say I was so preoccupied getting the whole triathlon going and also nervous for myself, and she was so good at keeping herself busy, that I didn't give much thought to Brooklyn being there. But later as I looked through the pictures, I realized she was watching me the whole time. I am not a super athlete or certainly not a super model, but I like to think it's good for my daughter to watch me do hard things!
[My friend and her daughter. This will be Brooklyn & me in a few years!]
The first triathlon I ever did was when Brooklyn was a baby. I wore the same hideous triathlon suit - I remember being grateful for the zipper because I had to nurse her more than once before my swim heat started!

The weather (and the water) was chillier than we expected, but I think it was good for a long workout, especially compared to the over 100-degree heat index we've been battling! The wind was rough, it rained again, and a few times I thought I was going to pass out or throw up, but I didn't! YAY! I'm calling that a win. We had a couple little snags, like when I carefully arranged the starting heats for the swim and then got to the pool and discovered that the pool has only 6 lanes and not 8 (oops), or when the first turn of the run was supposed to be marked by a water station but I forgot to actually send water to the water station, so there was just an empty table. I also told people to "turn at the dead fox," but actually you don't see the dead fox until just after you turn. So consequently, my poor neighbor managed to miss the turn and ended up running 6 miles instead of 3.1. And another friend of mine was nearly hit by a car on her bike! But luckily everyone finished safely in the end.
I can't think of a great enough caption for this one.

It was so inspiring and empowering to watch all these people stretch out of their comfort zone and try harder to improve at something. No one can be incredible at everything, which I think is why I love triathlons so much. We all have our different strengths and weaknesses and our own individual times to shine. Kind of like life. Everyone finished the entire race, I met so many amazing new people, and there were donuts and chocolate milk at the finish line. We should do this every Saturday!

1 sweet nothings:

Summer said...

I got a little choked up when reading this thinking about when my girls are old enough to hand the camera to and being able to actually see how they view me. Thanks for sharing your experience and seriously, what an inspiration to DO hard things! I needed that reminder to just DO IT! I love your drive, Krista! And congratulations on a successful event :-) It's fun that it'll be an annual triathlon now.