Last winter a friend from church tried to convince me we needed to participate in a triathlon. I said, "yeah great that sounds like fun", without giving it much thought. My friend, Julie, then talked to another friend and another friend and it seemed like there was no way to get out of it. Julie was convinced we could do it and has been our coordinator and cheerleader through it all. Three couples from church and I started training for the sprint triathlon in April/May of this year. A sprint tri is a 500m swim in open water, 20K bike and a 5K run. Now I wasn't concerned at all about the run, but hadn't been on my bike for about 2years and did not feel confident I could swim the length of a pool (25m) without stopping and touching. SOOOO, I started to swim, swim and swim some more. With help from a very good swimmer friend (Darcy) and lots of practice, I was able to swim over 500m in the pool and about 500m at Stoney Creek Lake before the race. I took a lot of long bike rides and pulled out the old mountain bike I bought in college. Nicole, Morgan and I stayed with Uncle John and Aunt Beth the night before the race and Beth brought the girls and my three nieces to the race(what a great support, thanks!) The morning of the race was COLD. Yes, after all the training in the 80-90 degree weather and we get crazy MI weather for August. It was a little intimidating seeing all the athletes just know what to do and where to be. This was a great learning experience for the future sprint tri's I MIGHT do. The picture of us in our wet suits from left to right is; me, Ben, Julie, Barby Craig, Moriah and Scott. We are waiting to go into the water. The wet suits are for warmth, but also for buoyancy. Here is how I made out: I had a horrible swim, about 6 minutes longer than I could do in the pool. I didn't expect a current in the water and got a lot of water in my mouth and got seasick, YUCK. I made up time with the bike and run and had a great time the last two legs of the race. I finished in 1 hour and 37 minutes and 6th out of 11 for my female age group. I was happy with the time, but disappointed with the swim. I had fun and the girls were at every transition cheering me on. Everyone in the group finished the race, which was our original goal. I had a great summer training for this. If I can overcome the bad experience with the swim, I could see myself doing a lot more of these types of races. I'll need a street bike next time, I was working much harder than the street bikers were. I am posting the last of the pics in the sidebar-thanks Beth for taking them. Thanks to all of my race partners, I feel like I have met a big goal. Kelly
