First Post Baby Tri!!!!

Today Travis & I competed in the Hickory Grove Sprint Triathlon. It was a 500 meter swim, 15.5 mile bike and a 5K run. This was my first tri post baby Samantha. It went pretty good. I wanted to be faster than last year and got really close (within 30 seconds). I guess, that isn't too bad for 6 weeks of training (Sam is 8 weeks old today). Why do we get greedy as athletes.....I should be happy I finished but I'm sure I'm preaching to the chior if there are any other triathletes reading this.

We started off the morning at 4:30am. We thought we would be out the door by 5am. This is another thing we are learning as parents. We don't set the schedule, Sam does. She woke up right when we did and of course she was hungry. She had eaten at 1:30am so we were expecting her to make it until 5:30am but as I said, we don't rule the roost here anymore. Needless to say we were out the door by 5:15am. Still pretty respectable but it didn't allow us time to pick up muffins and cinnamon rolls for the babysitter and her family. I'm taking her out to dinner Tuesday night and I should buy a gift card for them.

We made it to the race for packet pickup in good time regardless of our somewhat late start. It was chilly (50 degrees). Travis started at 8:04am and I had to hang out until 8:48am. I thought it would be good to get in the water so at about 8:30 I wandered in. BRRRRR! Water temp was 71 degrees and it took my breath away - I've only done two open water swims and both were in water that was 80 degrees. I'm used to the balmy 85 degrees of the pool. I'm really glad I got in. Most of the other women were in as well.

As for the rest of the race the only things eventful that happened were that I had a couple of people try to swim over me. I've been fortunate not to have this happen to me before and I didn't like it. Thank goodness for wetsuits. I will state again that I am never, NEVER, NEVER doing a race where wetsuits aren't legal. I guess the pro circut is out for me (as if that was ever going to happen). Then at the beginning of the bike I first couldn't get my shoe in. Then I got that all figured out but my stupid speedometer wasn't working. Then I did something stupid. I tried to push the sensor closer to the wheel while I was on the bike. You can probably guess what happened. I'm an idot - but someone was looking out for me and I just skinned my ring finger. I could have lost a digit! It hurt pretty bad and was bleeding decently but I continued on. The ride was hard. I haven't ridden all out effort wise for about a year. Time to pay my dues. I did go back and forth with another girl in my age group which was pretty fun. Toward the end of the bike she came up beside me and said "Please tell me you are a slow runner". I told her not to worry because I am slower than snot off of the bike. I then passed her again about a half mile from the end of the bike.

The run was hard as it always is. About half a mile in I decided to ditch the maximum effort as my heart rate was going pretty high. I also stopped looking at my watch. I still finished with a middle of the pack run time.

Overall, I finished 6th out of 43 in my age group and 44th of 171 women overall. Here are my times:

SWIM (500 meters): 10:47.9

BIKE (15.5 miles): 48:05.01

RUN (5K): 28:00.5

Total: 1:29:42.7

Now I have to decide if this is my one and only race this year. There is another one in our area in a few weeks. We'll have to decide.

As for Sam, she did really well at Rhonda's. She slept most of the morning - had a bottle at 9am and another around 12:30pm. She was a happy camper when we picked her up.