No More Bike!!

Woohoo!!  I am DONE!!  And more importantly, my bike is going into storage for many, many months.

Not much exciting to say about the expo - I checked in and dropped off my bike.  I did have lots of traffic issues getting to and from the expo and race site.  A lesson in patience apparently.

Race Morning!!  I woke up an hour before my alarm.  And tried not to let my mind start and fortunately I fell back asleep.  Then my alarm went off for real and it was time to get up and moving.  Driving across the bridge, you could see them setting up the bike course.  I arrived at the race site and set up my transition area and then wandered down to the water.  I passed by who I thought was Ali Edwards and inside I'm thinking "It's Ali Edwards!!" but outside I was playing it cool.  I love Ali - her blog was probably one the first I started "following" regularly.

I got down to the water and did my ritual of inching in to the water until I immersed myself completely.  The water wasn't super cold!  Whew!  I got in line with my other yellow swim caps.  Our magic word?  Excellent.  As in I finished this day as an excellent triathlete!  We were counted down and off we went!  I felt like I was swimming fairly strong and every time I looked up I was surrounded by other yellow caps which made feel good.  I wasn't at the back of the pack.  The water was fairly choppy, not too bad, but every once in awhile a big wave would come rolling in.   I was about halfway through the swim course when I came up upon another swimmer and tried to maneuver around but she was a little all over the place and she ended up kicking me.  Which, with that many bodies?  Is bound to happen.  But then she turns to yell at me "Oh, come on!"  Really?  You kicked me.  She must have been having a bad day.

And then I saw the swim finish.  While on the one hand I was glad to be done with the swim, on the other hand I wanted to keep swimming so that when I came out of the water it would be time to do the run (walk).  And I could skip the bike!  But no such luck.  I got out of the water and headed back to my bike.  Oh bike.  I tried to talk nicely to my bike in hopes that would help.  It did for awhile.  I also gave myself permission to do whatever I needed to do to finish.  Such as walking up the really short, steep hill.    I was feeling fairly good and then I was heading up a hill when guess what?  My chain came off.  Again.  But the good news was since I'd already dealt with it earlier in the week I didn't panic.  Well didn't panic too much.  I pulled off to the side and attempted to get the chain back on.   Thank goodness it was only the chain!  I got back on and started off again.  The rest of the bike was fairly uneventful and soon I was back in transition getting ready to walk.

I started towards the run start.  And I really wanted to run, but I didn't.  In fact most of the run can be summed up with I really wanted to run but I didn't.  Even at the finish line.  Which was the worst - so many people cheering and here I was walking.   I have come so far with my knee and I didn't want to do anything that could damage it.  Plus I'm a rule follower and since the physical therapist hasn't given me the okay to run, I walked.  Plus I had walked the entire thing, so I wanted to actually finish walking.  So I walked through the finish line and got my medal.

My parents were there to cheer me on at the finish line.  And I told my mom about seeing Ali Edwards (since she is a bigger fan that I am).  And wouldn't you know I happened to look over and see Ali.  So I dragged my mom over to meet her since I knew she wouldn't go by herself, and I knew she would regret it if she didn't take the chance to meet Ali.  Ali was super nice.

Going into this, I wanted to finish in less than 2 hours and 30 minutes (since my worst time was 2 hours and 26ish minutes).  And I did!!  I finished in 2 hours 10 minutes and 55 seconds.  Not my best time, but not my worst!  And given the chain issue as well as the knee issue, I'll take that!

Transition Area

Lots of bikes

Almost time to swim

This will be me soon

Almost "GO" time

Finished!

Ali & Emily

Yay!  Another medal!