Swim, Bike, Run!

So, I like to consider myself somewhat of a weekend warrior. Now, in saying that I should also let you know that most of the time I attempt to make myself sound much more hardcore than I really am! Well this weekend my adventure seeking ways took me to the banks of the Union Reservoir in the booming metropolis of Longmont, Colorado for a sprint triathlon. Hardcore, right?! What I didn't mention is that it was actually a triathlon relay, which means I only had to do one portion of the race while my talented friends Kim and Kathleen would take care of the other two. So, the night before the big race Kim and Kathleen come over so we could prepare mentally, physically, and emotionally for the following day. This is how it all would go down: Kim will be swimming a half mile (in open water...I had to throw that in there for all you swimmers that realize that really isn't so far). I was preparing to bike a grueling 12.5 miles on a flat closed course through a residential neighborhood (speed bumps and all!) and, Kathleen was gearing up to run a 5k out-and-back down a dirt road with a giant hill (ok slight incline, but she did have to run next to cornfields in the blaring sun!). What we came to discover so late at night was that Kim forgot her athletic swimsuit and was left with only a bikini (good thing it was a Nike) and Kathleen didn't even have a pair of running shorts since she was fresh off the plane from her trip home to Missouri. My immediate thoughts: this is going to be a disaster! We were are laughing quite hard when we figured these things out, and were completely prepared to live up to our team name, Team Moderate. After arriving at the race we spent most of the morning practicing our transitions, gawking at the tri bikes with the sippy cups and aerodynamic helmets hanging from their handlebars, and wishing we would have actually trained. Ok, so we didn't really practice our transitions, but we watched many a participant go for a warm up jog and thought to ourselves, these ladies are intense! So the swim starts and Kathleen and I watched Kim until we couldn't figure out which one she was anymore, and then headed to the transition area. I got my gear on took a deep breath, looked up and saw Kim running toward me. Holy cow she totally rocked it! The pressure was on! I jumped on my bike (which I literally hadn't been on since early June), somehow figured out how to clip in my shoes, and pedaled my little heart out! I quite enjoyed being on the bike because I actually did this same triathlon last year without the luxury of a road bike, and let me just tell you, it wasn't pretty! So as I passed those poor girls on mountain bikes, I remembered me and my friend Jenny and how hard we had to work to go half the speed the road bikes were going, and I thought...hmmm this is fun! When I got back to the transition my legs were so shot I could barely run, so I kind of hobbled (running in biking cleats is not easy!) to Kathleen, gave her the timing chip and off she went. By the time Kim and I made it to the road race course, we waited a few minutes and Kathleen was already coming down the hill. We ran with her for about 30 seconds until she took off sprinting, at which point we just yelled GO KATHLEEN! and hoped for the best. We didn't get to see her cross the finish line but seeing as she was ahead of schedule we both felt very good about it. After the race we enjoyed the freebies at the expo and stumbled upon the leader board to find out that our team was in none other than 3rd place!! We were quite stoked to say the least, and after the times for the run portion were posted, we actually discovered that we had moved up to 2nd! WHAT?!! How did that happen? We didn't even train, we didn't have the appropriate attire but we somehow still pulled it off! Our prize was a bottle of wine and a lot of pride (although the competitiveness inside me was still a little mad that we lost to the 1st place team by less than a minute). Nevertheless, we made a pact that no matter where we live in the country, we will do 1 tri relay together per year. I think we'll change our name to Team Awesome! Oh, and I highly recommend trying a multi-sport race. My next will be a duathlon (run-bike-run) and I am stoked!