Giving it a Tri

Remember how I’ve been training for this triathlon for almost a year? Let’s pause and remember that I first signed up for a triathlon when I didn’t even know how to swim. That I practiced and prepared and then missed my first race because I got in a car accident the day before. Not that I felt super ready for that race but I was still bummed. Then I went through months of physical therapy and started at square one running again and learning how to run without hurting my hip over and over again. I also took swimming lessons, read triathlon books, mentally prepared and did every other kind of preparation I could think of.

Then I sort of got burned out on the schedule. Two fairly long workouts six days a week? That is a huge commitment. And I stuck to it for about 13 weeks. Then I did four weeks of crap. Skipping bike rides, avoiding runs, eating whatever the heck I felt like. The only thing I was keeping up with was the swim workouts and that was because I was scared to death that I would drown or have some other catastrophe during the race.

I had practiced swimming to the point where I felt most confident in that leg of the race – excited to prove to myself that hey, I really can do this. And yeah you can overcome fears and inabilities.

Now let me introduce you to my husband. Nick is one of those people that can just do anything and he tends to do things well.

We drove down to Provo together to pick up my race packet the night before the race. Twelve hours before sign-in time to be exact. Some guy says to him “Dude, why aren’t you doing the race with her? You’re just going to watch?!” and then that little voice in Nick’s overly competitive brain said “Challenge accepted!” and he signed up on the spot.

Does Nick know how to swim? Absolutely not. Did he put in a single practice swim? Nope. Did he ever practice the transition from bike to run? Not a chance.

Did he win second place? Yep. He most certainly won second place in his age division.

Okay, okay, let’s rewind.

The night before the race – remember, the night Nick signed up too – it started getting incredibly stormy. We had thunder and lightning from probably ten o’clock until we woke up at 4 am.

We drove the two hour drive south to Provo amidst more thunder and lightning. We even saw lightning touch down.

You know those space ships in Independence Day that would come hover over the city and everyone would go “ooohhh bright lights” and stand underneath only to have a bright green beam of light come down and destroy everything? That is totally what lightning hitting earth looks like. Except for the space ship. Obviously.

Anyway, the swim portion of the race ended up being cancelled because of all the lightning. Nick was happy about this. I was pretty much bummed out. I mean, the swim is what I was trying to prove to myself. I knew I could bike and run.

But whatever. I told myself I’d just look for another race of the same distance and hopefully I can do that later this month.

Although admittedly, I am so ready to be done with “training” for a while.

So I decided to just enjoy the race for what it was and not be disappointed in the moment.

We had a really great team of motivators watching from the side lines. Mack gave us high fives at every transition area and turnaround. My dad and Nick’s dad took a bunch of pictures during the race and updated our moms as the day went on. Spencer was busy making a finish line of his own