6 posts tagged “triathlon”

Yes, I finished!  It was hard, so hard. 

The race started at 8:00am, but since we were swimming in a pool, only one person can start at a time, so I didn't actually start the race until 9:42am.  (One person starts every 10 seconds, but with 500 racers, it takes a while.)  The start time is based on a swim time that each participant submits before the race, so the fast swimmers go first and the slow swimmers go last.  I was actually 472 out of about 535.  It was hard to relax while waiting for my start. 

I was expecting the swim to be pretty easy.  In my training, I was able to swim the 300m fairly easily and then I would keep swimming up to 800m to work on my stroke and breathing.  But I must have started out too fast, or got caught up in the excitement of everything, or got flustered by swimming with 50 other people in the pool, because I got winded pretty quickly, so I didn't feel like I started out too well.  A lot of people passed me.  A lot.

I was most concerned about the bike ride.  The bike I was using wasn't designed for racing or for efficiency in general, so I knew I would have to work much harder.  I did pretty good and was even able to do a bit better than the pace I rode when I was training.  But a lot of people passed me.  A lot.

After the swim and the bike ride, the run was brutal!  It was so brutal, I had to walk about half of it.  (That's why I look so good in the running picture, I had just had a nice walk and just picked up the pace for the last 3/4 mile). I wasn't alone in my brisk walk; everyone else I saw on the run course was walking most of the time.  So I passed a few people.  Like 3 people.

Casey, the boys, Casey's parents and my brother and his family all came to cheer me on.  It was nice to have their encouragement on the way.  I could hear Coulson yelling for me while I was in the pool, and at the end of the run, I could hear Coulson yelling "Run faster, mom!"  He really wanted to win the race.  He'll have to settle for 166th place (out of 187 women).  And I finished in less than 2 hours!  1 hour, 50 minutes and 8 seconds, to be exact.  I'm already thinking about doing it again...

 I finished the triathlon, but I haven't yet reached my goal for World Vision. I would still like to get $200 more to help fund projects for clean water in Africa.  My fundraising page will still take donations for another month - for those who wanted to make sure I actually finished the race before donating ;-)

A great big thanks to everyone who sponsored me!  This wouldn't have been such a great event without your support!

My town is the local gathering place for cyclists.  On MapMyRide, a website where people can post their favorite bike routes, searching for my town's name (population 9,000 and 11 square miles) yields 43 routes.  Comparitively, our neighbor Winston-Salem (pop, 223,000 and 110 square miles) gets only 37 routes.  I see at least one cyclist every day riding past our neighborhood, many days I see several.  And these people are serious cyclists, too.  They all have those nice road bikes, aerodynamic helmets, professional clothing, special gloves, fancy shoes that clip into the bike - these people are the real deal.

A few times I've passed these cyclists on my own rides going in opposite directions, but last week I encountered some going in my direction.  They were friendly as they easily passed me without any effort, waving and saying good morning, as I huffed and puffed and tried to offer a friendly smile in return.  I'm sure I looked like the equivalent of a country bumpkin to them with my hybrid bike, completely non-aerodynamic helmet and regular workout clothes (well, I was wearing bike shorts, but not the "real" bike shorts that have extra padding on the bum for added comfort).  Oh well, I just hope I was able to provide some amusement to their workout.

Last week the chain fell off twice while I was shift gears (both times while going up a hill!) and then I had a bunch of trouble just shifting gears in general, so I took it to the store to get adjusted.  I tried it again this morning and I was concerned before I even left my neighborhood because I couldn't get it in the right gear.  But finally the chain got in position and I started on my ride for the day, a two loop course on the country roads around my neighborhood (a route I found on MapMyRide, it starts right at the entrance to my neighborhood and the route was submitted by a user with the first initial and last name of my neighbor, so although I have not confirmed this with him, I am fairly certain that he developed this route). 

The first half of the first loop of my ride was very nice.  Two bluejays flew by, the cows on one of the farms were all hanging out close to the road and I saw two beautiful turquois birds walking along the road.  I thought they might be peacocks but with a clipped tail.  But I had to ask myself, why would peacocks have their beautiful tails clipped?  And then I had to ask myself, why would two peacocks be walking down a country road in North Carolina?  So I don't know what I saw, but they were very beautiful.

But then my pleasant ride got a bit choppy.  Going up a hill, my chain wouldn't cooperate when I tried to switch gears, but I eventually made it to the top.  It continued to give me trouble for about 5 minutes, just refusing to get in the right spot, but then is strangely seemed to start working again.  And then suddenly a large black dog charged right at me, ferociously barking.  My first instinct was to hit the brakes (I don't know!), but I quickly reversed that instinct and took off pedaling.  I also noticed a rottweiler barking at me, but thankfully he didn't leave his yard (and now that I look at pictures of rottweilers online, I think the first dog was also a rottweiler, just without a lot of brown trimmings).  My heart was pounding and as I kept riding, I had to decide what to do about the second loop of my ride.  I decided to keep going because I really need to do this bike training since the race is in 5 days and I knew that it would take me 40 minutes to get back to that spot again and I was hoping that the dog would be on some other road by then.

On the second loop, my gears worked fine, which relieved some of my anxiety about how my bike would behave on race day.  However, the dog was still there.  I gave him my best fierce snarl and yelled threateningly at him, sprayed my water bottle towards him.  He kept his distance when I did that, but he still ran along side of me barking.  Wow, that dog was fast!  There's no way I ever would have been able to out run him on my bike, but he stopped chasing me once he got to some trees, thankfully.  But it was pretty scary and now, after reading on wikipedia that rottweilers were the 2nd most breed responsibile for fatal dog attacks, I don't think I want to do that route again.  (Although I've ridden that route about 6 times before and today was the first time I've encountered that dog) 

On a more positive note - I'm almost at 90% of my fundraising goal!  Only a few more days left, but a few more donations could get me to my goal.  Don't forget to check out my fundraising page at www.firstgiving.com/valglass because I just posted a pretty unflattering picture of me after a workout! 

If you want to sponsor me for the triathlon, but you don't want to use the online service for some reason, you can still give with a check.  Just make the check payable to "World Vision."  You can mail the check to me and I can send it in for you, or you can print and fill out this form and mail it in yourself.  If you mail it in yourself, please let me know so I can add it to my total on my webpage because they don't yet have a system to notify me when a donation is made on my behalf.  World Vision will mail you a receipt for your donation.  If you want me to mail the check for you, send me an email so I can know to expect it.  Thanks!

*** Wow! This entry got pretty long!  It's a conglomeration of about 10 blogs that I've been wanting to write for the past several months, but kept procrastinating, so if you don't want to read the whole thing, I'll go ahead and skip to the important stuff: Sponsor Me!

When I decided to do this triathlon, I was basically a couch potato.  A few months before, my exercise consisted of walking to the park and some Jane Fonda videos.  But I got bored with Jane and it was too cold for outdoor walks, so I hadn't done anything for a while. 

So I started training for the triathlon in late December, but I didn't have a bike or access to a pool (and no money to remedy that situation) so I did the only thing I could do - I starting running.  I took Chester (my dog) with me and the first week out, I could barely run 2 blocks before I had to stop and walk for a bit.  My goal was to run for about 20 minutes 3 times a week, but the cold weather and my lazy nature collaborated to make running even once week a miracle sometimes.  I used my Christmas money to buy a fleece sweatshirt and some running shoes, so that encouraged me to run up to twice a week.

After the first couple weeks, I could feel a difference.  I still needed to walk, but not as frequently.  I really felt like I was making progress when I realized that Chester was holding me back, so I would run with Chester for about 15 minutes, pass by the house again to drop off Chester and then keep running.

In March I visited my brother in NY.  He's does a lot of races and knew I was training, so he suggested that I run a 2 mile fun run with him.  My 10 year old nephew joined us.  2 miles was a big deal for me, at the time I was running a little over 1.5 miles on my runs, and still stopping to walk once or twice.  My brother was nice and kept pace with his son and I did my best to keep up with them.  And of course they didn't stop to walk.  It was rough, but I survived.

Once the heat of summer hit, it got harder to keep running in the brutal southern sun - somedays it was over 85 degrees by 8:30am, and this was just May/early June!   So I slacked off took off a couple weeks and just waited until after we moved to resume my training.

I joined the YMCA first thing after moving to our new town.  It was literally the first thing I did because I took the kids and was signing up for the Y while Casey was at the house helping the movers unload the truck.  The YMCA has a pool.  Two down, one to go - I still didn't have a bike.  The Y does have stationary bikes, so I started working with that, but I don't know if it's the same thing.

I love the Y.  It has great childcare and the boys like it (well, "like it" is a strong word for anything that doesn't include me, I should say that they "accept it" which is the best I'll ever get for a drop-off childcare situation).  My first couple workouts in the pool were like my first attempts at running, but I was still surprised that it only took about 15 minutes to finish the length for my triathlon race.  Now I feel pretty good about the swim and I can finish in just under 10 minutes.

So lately I've been focusing on the biking and running.  Last week I tried the full lengths for bike and running back to back - 12 miles on the bike and 3.1 miles running.  Now, working out at the Y is nice because it's got A/C and the bikes have individual TVs and when I was doing this particular 12 mile bike ride, I found Pride and Prejudice on the Oxygen channel (the Keira Knightly version), so I was actually disappointed when I finished (of course I finished right when Elizabeth was ready to accept Darcy's final proposal).  The run was a bit tough.  My heart and endurance were okay, but my leg muscles were really tired.  I wanted to stop, but I forced myself to get through it, and I survived. 

So now I kinda feel like I'm in pretty good shape for the race, except for one thing - I'm still biking on a stationary bike.  My mom is letting me borrow her bike and I just got my helmet yesterday, so soon I can start biking for real and find out if my training on the stationary bike was any help.

Now, you've made it to the end of this super long blog entry!  And again, here's the good part:

Okay, I'm going to try to blog about this again and I'll remember to save after each paragraph...

In December I made a crazy decision to race in a triathlon.  It took me about eight months to decide to do this, but I finally gave in when I learned that I could raise money for World Vision at the same time.  The idea first took hold last spring when I read a brochure from a non-profit that encourages people to train for marathons, triathlons, century rides and half-marathons and ask people to sponsor them to raise money for their organization.  I was interested, but it wasn't a good time in my life to training for something so big (small kids, moving to new town).  It was for a really good cause, but not one that I was super passionate about.

I liked the variety of a triathlon, but the length of a half-marathon - if only they had something like a half-triathlon.  Well, in the fall, one of my friends told me that, yes, they do have such a thing.  It's called a sprint triathlon.  My interest was gaining, but not enough to push me over the edge.

Then in December, I read in the newsletter from World Vision, one of my favorite charities, that they had a program called Team World Vision.  Mostly they try to recruit a team to run the Chicago Marathon, but they also provide a way for individuals to raise money for them through any race they enter.  So I decided to go for it!

I'll blog more about the training process - that's a totally different story.  Don't forget, if you want to make a (tax deductible) contribution, visit my fundraising page at http://www.firstgiving.com/valglass

I just spent almost 2 hours writing a very important blog entry (well, I was watching TV while blogging, so it wasn't like 2 hours of typing) and then the laptop just blacked out on me and I couldn't get it to come back on - isn't it supposed to beep at me when the battery gets low?  I plugged it back in, but that didn't help.  I lost everything. Ahhhhhhhg! 

Anyway, it was a very important blog all about how I decided to train for a triathlon and raise money for World Vision.  The bottom line is this - I'm going to do a sprint triathlon (300m swim, 20K bike, 5K run) in September and my main motivation is so I can raise money for World Vision (a great relief organization that I trust and respect, helping people and communities all over the word fight poverty).  Here's the link so you can donate:

My first blog entry was much more informative and more eloquent, but I guess no one will ever know...