I can honestly say I gave it my all and I am very satisfied with my time! If the race was an additional 100 yards, I would have collapsed…I left everything I had out on the course and it’s such a great feeling knowing I did that. I am not going to lie though, because I went all out…I was dying out there and it was a terrible feeling at the time.

I did not want to talk about time too much because I had no idea what to expect as far as bottlenecks in the course and/or transition times (time it takes it takes to put your sneakers/helmet on, etc…). I mentioned I wanted to break 1:10 and I felt pretty confident I would but I was really shooting for 1:05….and I finished at 1:05:54!! I placed 171 out of 750 participants overall but came in 17th place out of all first timers which I thought was pretty good. My only goal was to finish to the best of my ability and I feel like I did that so the race was a “win” for me.

I have to share my swim story with you…

I definitely would not call myself a strong swimmer, I pretty much just started swimming laps in my pool a few months ago but I swam enough to know I would be fine during the race. I am sure most (if not all) first timers were anxious at the beginning, I know I was. They separated the 750 tri-athletes into 8-10 groups and each waive started 3 minutes after one another. I found myself in the first row to start the swim. I was thinking to myself that I should not be out front but it was too late to do anything. Being up front made me swim a lot faster than my normal pace because I kept feeling hands smack my legs so it was pushing me to go faster. So, I started the swim going all out and it felt like I swallowed about a gallon of ocean water within the first minute before realizing I should close my mouth. About half-way through the swim, I had to change my swim stroke as my arms were absolutely dead. In my mind, I was thinking “breast stroke” but apparently I do not know how to do that (I thought I did) because I started doing the doggy paddle…the freaking doggy paddle?? I am thinking to myself as I am paddling “what am I doing, this is not the breast stroke”. I had to stop it because I was barely moving so I just sucked it up and went back to the normal swim stroke…I just had to laugh at myself knowing I used the doggy paddle stroke  during the race. Next triathlon, I will have to dedicate a couple of training sessions to the breast stroke and just hope I can do it on demand.

Check out the pics below…

Here is the crew, we all went to high-school together and this was everyone’s first triathlon…I am wearing the red shirt

We definitly did not look like this after the race!