Pacific Grove Olympic Triathlon

Earlier this year Jared suggested we do an Olympic Triathlon. I had done a sprint tri a few times including one earlier this summer to warm up for this big one. So we signed up for the Pacific Grove Triathlon, on Saturday Sept. 8th.

Distance: 1.5k (.9m) Swim, 40k (~25m) Bike, 10k (6.2m) Run.

I was super nervous because the month prior to the race I got burnt out and didn't really train after. I hadn't swam, or run more than 3 miles at a time in the month prior to the race. The week before I even considered backing out. I woke up Friday morning making the decision to do it along with some encouragement from Jared and other friends. On my way to rent my wet suit, I got rear-ended at a stop light. Yup, I definitely wasn't doing it. After exchanging information with the nice gentleman, I headed back home to crawl into bed and mope. Well, I got about one block and thought SEIZE THE DAY. I'll do it. So I headed down to Sports Basement and got my wet suit and headed home to get things ready. Keep in mind I was still extremely nervous, and a little upset at the fact the color for my wave/swim cap was purple. I hate purple. I'm yellow and it's my opposite. I got there to pick up my registration packet and swim cap to find that it resembled more of a periwinkle. I felt better.




My wave started 1 hr. and 30 minutes after the first one, the one Jared was in. So I had 1.5 hrs to stand around a be nervous. The swim was called the "kelp crawl." It's because half the time you're swimming and the other half you're literally crawling over tons of kelp. This is a shot of the boats bringing in the buoys.




After only 5 hrs of sleep and severe nervousness I was on the verge of tears. Then I saw my savior. Kim! I just fell into her arms as she sympathized with me about the swim ahead. Here she is with Adrian (nice onesie) who does is every year. She gave me some encouragement and then we went to search for Jared coming out of the water.

















I survived the swim. It was actually a breeze. I just took my time and didn't worry too much about overall time. I tried to think of a primary song to hum, or sing in my head. However, out of the 57 billion primary songs I know I could not think of one. So, I enjoyed the beauty of the green kelp in the blue water. Here I am on the bike portion. It was the easiest part since I had been biking more. I'm the second biker in the photo.

















Here I am wondering if it's ok that I can't feel my feet. They were asleep for the entire run.
















I actually ran the entire 6 miles. With feet that were asleep. I did this with the help of my cheering section, Jared and Andrea and Dustin.




















I was super happy to only have one more lap.









I was so ecstatic to be done. And excited to have burned about 2500 calories. Jared and I were eating for the rest of the day:) I'm sad we don't have more photos of Jared, especially of him in motion. He finished in the top 100 our of 1000, including pros!


Here I am at my transition station. My final time: 3:27 Hrs Flat. Swim-43:49/Bike-1:28:35/ Run 1:06:27 My transition times added up to ~8 min. Yeah, I didn't really rush. It's hard taking off a wet suit. I bet if I trained better than I would have knocked off about 15-20 mins. Maybe next time. There's a Triathlon in Zürich next August;)