Liz = Triathlete!

Its official folks, I am a triathlete!!!

I finished the IronGirl Sprint triathlon on Sunday, July 26 (the day before my birthday!) and it was awesome!!!

In fact, the local paper here (the post standard) quoted me as saying how awesome it was!

http://blog.syracuse.com/outdoors/2009/07/photo_slideshow_first_iron_wom.html

one thing that was not awesome - my bike broke! so my real time is more like 1:50:00... but now i have the experience to call myself a "real" triathlete. the Bike Loft people that fixed my bike (my heros! along with the 3 guys who tried to fix the bent chain) told me that some would argue that completing a triathlon alone will NOT a triathlete make - you have to have something go wildly wrong (like your bike falling apart) to really claim the title. well, here's to me being a "real" IronGirl. YAY!

the mind is the battlefield. really. 99% of what happened out there was mental. when my bike broke, I had a lot of thoughts race through my head. "maybe I'm not supposed to do this" "what made me think I could actually complete this?" "what if i have to forfeit?" "etc" but the overarching thought - that suppressed all these crappy thoughts - was "have faith, this is just a little bump in the road. take a sip of gatorade, a couple of lunas, stretch, and soon i'll have the wind whipping thru my hair at 20mph on my FIXED bike" really. well, God really delivered (in the form of the Bike Loft tent) and after 21 minutes, I was on my way.

I proceeded to pass about 200 women. 200 awesome, inspiring, women who were huffing and putting their all in. it was so cool to see all those people. and everyone was so nice. shortly after mile 15 I passed the (speedy gonzalas) 68 year old - she's awesome by the way - and (YAY!) didn't fall off my bike in the approach to T2!

Then I finished off with a 32 minute run (not my best, but considering... eh... ok, its ok).

Next time, the bike won't break!!!!!!!!

now, about next time - www.skanraces.com. I'm going to do "I'm all that" Sprint triathlon on saturday, then 1 mile open water swim 8am sunday, 2mile TT bike race at 12, then 4mile road race at 4pm. Its called "i'm all that" when you do all of them! I'm already signed up for the tri, and i really want to practice the 1mile swim leg (the fingerlakes tri is 0.9miles), and i figured i'd round out the day with the bike and run.

then, 2 weeks after that, the olympic distance Fingerlakes tri.