Different but Awesome!

On Sunday I finished my first triathlon - The Luna Bar Women's Triathlon at Rancho Seco. Distances = .5 mile swim, 20 mile bike ride and 4 mile run. Coming from a long distance running world I can't help but compare. My summation of the experience = different, but awesome. For those of you who care to hear why, read on. Otherwise, here are some pics of the experience.

1. There's that whole "biking" and "swimming" thing.
Yeah, I know it seems obvious. But the overhead both physically and mentally is nothing short of exhausting. With running, you have everything when you start and you either finish or you don't. Triathlons involve detailed packing, setup and execution. So like a rookie, I missed some stuff during my transition - my sunglasses during the bike ride and my race belt for the run (had to run back to grab it in the transition area after a volunteer pointed it out ... thanks volunteer dude).

2. Hello, coordination or lack thereof.
If you know me well, you know I'm a total clutz. I pretty much have a story every other week about where I tripped and fell running (my knees are finally healed from falling on the golden gate bridge during the half marathon in SF, thanks for asking). So when I signed up to swim, ride and then run consecutively I was basically endangering myself. But I'm surprisingly bruise and accident free! Perhaps the constant anticipation of all the upcoming transitions kept me on my toes, mentally and physically, more so than running where I am doing the same thing for up to 4 and half hours (my marathon time).

3. Training Flexibility
For this tri, I really didn't follow a structured training plan. Sure, I googled when I should start doing "bricks" (Bike and Runs), but in general I just stuck to the plan to get a swim, bike and run in during the week at a minimum. This is VERY different from long distance running. And that may have been because of the shorter distance for this tri. If we were talking a half ironwoman, I wouldn't be noting this. BUT I have to say it was freakin fabulous on the days where it was 106 degrees out to be like "Run tonight? Hell no, I'm going to the pool."

So there you go - different, but awesome. Here are some pics from my experience and two of my fabulous friends who got me through this (Thanks Monica for talking me into it and Carrie for doing the practice tri w/ me!).





Oh, and I wish I could say I was original and decided to blog about my first triathlon out of pure genius. But in reality, I should give props to my wonderfully inspiring friend Lesley - who blogged about her recent triathlon experience in Portland AND came out to root Carrie and I on at mile 9.5 of the bike course! MPPA Girls rule!

That's it for now. Time for bed. :)