Triathlon Highlights and Thoughts

So in my recap, there were a few things I forgot to discuss.

First, one of the most hilarious moments came during the first timers’ meeting, where the speaker was talking about transition and mentioned that someone near you might have an ugly Little Mermaid towel.  Kim and I burst out laughing because her transition towel does, in fact, feature The Little Mermaid.  But as she was quick to point out, it’s far from ugly.

Both during the kids tri and the adult tri, we saw teams of racers participating as Dick and Rick Hoyt do.  I didn’t see either of them swim, so I don’t know if one teammate was towing the other in a boat (I assume so), but seeing them on bike and run was beyond impressive.

The triathlete community is amazing.  There were some… less than polite people participating, but there were also people who were clearly excellent triathletes (I base this on their fabulous bikes) who were so awesome and friendly and encouraging.  I see this in the running community as well, but I’ve just felt it in spades from the tri community.

After posting my recap here and also on my tri club’s site, I realize I’m not giving myself enough credit for keeping going on the swim.  I’m disappointed in myself that I let myself get so worked up, but I got myself out of it.  That is no small feat.  For any of you who have had panic attacks, that’s pretty much where I was – just wanting to get out and be done.  But I wouldn’t let myself quit, and that’s pretty awesome.  I need to take credit for that.

Mostly, though, I’m just stubborn and didn’t want to give up.  I actually thought “Man, I don’t want to have to post this DNF on Facebook.”  Which makes me roll my eyes a little, but I did what I needed to do.

(Not that a DNF is a bad thing if you need to stop, especially during a swim.  Better to DNF than drown, of course.  But I made myself stop and decide what I needed to do, and I was okay to keep going.)

For those of you who are worried this is going to turn into an entirely triathlon blog, you shouldn’t.  I’m probably going to be a summer triathlete and a winter runner.  I still love the half marathon distance and I’ve got a marathon in January.  So you will just get the best of all worlds.