Done and done.

I completed the triathlon around 1:15 this afternoon.  What an amazing experience.  I will tell you more soon but now – I must take a shower and a nap.

Go Team!

Morning before

The race starts in two hours, 42 minutes.  Other than waking up an hour early and being unable to fall back to sleep, I feel good.  Calm.  For now.  For breakfast, I am dining on cinnamon toast, a banana and a glass of cytomax, a gatorade-like drink.  I miss my morning coffee, but I need to avoid dehydrating right now.

Speaking of dehydrating – after a bit of car trouble, my father arrived safely last night.  He and N put down two bottles of wine between them.  No commisery-induced temperance for this condo! I’ll make up for it tonight.  I called dibs on as much of the remaining good bottle of wine as I want. 

Now the race is two hours, 36 minutes away.  I am meeting up with the rest of the group at seven.  This race has an interesting set up.  We drive about 25 miles away and swim in a reservoir.  Then, we bike back to the resort – the ride is actually 28 miles.  Then, we run around the resort – 6 miles.  Then, we’re done!  Did I mention that our condo has tub with jacuzzi jets in it?  Guess where I’ll be this afternoon?

I guess that’s it for now.  I’ll write again this afternoon or tomorrow morning.  Hopefully, N will take lots of pictures and I can post some.

Wish me luck!

One day

Ack.

We made it safely to Sunriver.  Team in Training put us up in a very large, slightly shabby condo in the Sunriver Resort.  I’d guess it was built 105-15  years ago and at the time was the height of rustic chic.  Now, it’s still nice but certain details such as the bathroom tile betray its age.  That said, it’s probably nicer than anything N and I would have found.

My dad is arriving some time this afternoon.  I think his feelings were slightly hurt when I started referring to N as my “number one fan.”  Truly, my father shares the spot of “number one fan” and he’s been in the spot 26 years longer!  The condo has a second bedroom so he’ll be staying here with us.

I walked over to the resort’s grocery store this morning to pick up some half and half.  I passed lots of people wearing race numbers for the half marathon.  Sunriver is hosting a whole “race weekend.”  I know today is the half marathon and half ironman triathlon.  Tomorrow is my race plus a 10K run.  I think there are some events for kids thrown in there also.  Just walking past the runners, I picked up some of the race day excitement.  I can’t wait for tomorrow, but I’m also looking forward to the events of today – picking up the race packets, racking my bike, taking the resevoir for a test swim.  I already changed a tire this morning – it managed to go flat on the way up.

Dream a Little Dream

We leave today for Sunriver – in four hours in fact!

Last night I dreamt that I ran the triathlon.  A very complete dream, it had all the stages of the race – swim, bike and run.  I particularly remember the run portion, running through a tunnel-like area and pacing myself with some guy as we talked.  Most of all, I remember finishing and thinking, “Well, I rocked that.”

Then, my consciousness stepped up a plane as I ascended from deep sleep and it dawned on me that the race is in the future, not the past.  The part of me that isn’t looking forward to working really hard for 3-4 hours was disappointed but the majority of me felt happy that it’s still ahead of me and I’ll have more concrete memories when it is finished than a dream can provide.  Best of all, silly though it seems, part of my brain still thinks – I did it once, I can do it again, no problem!

Three days

We leave for Sunriver tomorrow!  I have a growing to-do list – buy sunscreen, practice changing my bike tires, get a pedicure. You know, the important stuff.  I want to have my toenails painted the TNT purple.  I know they won’t be visible for 2/3 of the race, but I think just knowing about them will help me feel jazzed.

I’m starting to have flashes of – what emotion is it?  Anxiety?  Excitement?  Panic?  All those and more mixed together.  If a flash is weighted heavily towards anxiety, I remind myself that I can do this.  It might suck, particularly at the very end, but it is completely in the realm of things I can do.

It certainly helps that we’ll be there a full day early so we have a chance to familiarize ourselves with everything.

Six Days

This time next week, it will all be over.  In the past seven days, people have asked me if I feel:

a) excited

b) anxious

The answer is yes.  And no.  I certainly have moments of anxiety and moments of excitement.  I feel certain that as the big day approaches, the excitement will grow.  Mostly; however, I feel ready.  Ready in the sense that I am physically prepared but also ready to do it and be done with it.  I want to check “Triathlon” off the “Things to Do Before I Die” list and move on to a new project.

Don’t get me wrong – I have thoroughly enjoyed the process but anyone who knows me knows that I love having several projects going.  This project required a time commitment and focus that did not leave room for much else.  I’ll be glad to have time free for new adventures. 

I think I’ll continue doing triathlons, though.  Now that the exercise is part of my routine, it should not be too difficult to keep it up.  I will simply shift it to the morning and free up my afternoons for other things.

I am feeling very calm and focussed right now.  I’ll be sure to post often in the coming week so you can see if this feeling morphs into something more dramatic.  I’ll keep you posted . . .

Tiny Shorts

This past weekend, N and I attended four barbecues!  On Friday night, we drove up to Seattle and joined Team in Training’s Seattle Triathlon team for a send-off celebration.  As far as barbecues go, it was great.  They had a keg of beer from a Bend, OR (near the race site) brewery.  They also had amazing ribs, chicken and lots of good side dishes. 

The people were also very nice.  Seattle has a much larger team than Tacoma.  Right now, our team is down to 3 (possibly 4) official members.  Seattle’s team has at least 20, maybe more – it was difficult to distinguish the team members from friends and family.  They were all very nice and seem like an interesting bunch of people.

At the send-off, we received the rest of our TNT gear.  We got our wetsuits about a month ago, but on Friday night we also received a singlet (imagine a zip-up tank top) and tri shorts emblazoned with the TNT logo.  I am told that there will be tons of fans at the race that cheer whenever someone in this gear goes by.  Taking the items out of the plastic alarmed me a bit – they looked tiny.  But, they are made of spandex, so when I put them on, they fit.  Not the most flattering clothes I’ve ever worn, but I guess I won’t be thinking much about my vanity when I’m in the midst of the race.

And now, for a break in our all-tri, all the time action

I love this post written by another blogger.  True, I don’t have the mini van, the kids or the iphone, but I am also no longer in my twenties and I know of what she speaks.

Things are going swimmingly

Last week, our swim practice consisted of a 45 minute time trial.  Basically, we started swimming and 45 minutes later, we stopped.  No breaks to drink water, discuss world politics or catch our breath.  The coach tracked how far we swam.  He yelled out when we hit 1500 meters, the distance we will swim in the race, but we had to keep swimming even after we hit that distance.

I hit 1500 meters at 29:30 and that is including the 30 or so seconds it took me to adjust my goggles after they filled with water.  By the end of 45 minutes, I swam 2250 meters.  This means I was keeping a pretty steady pace – about 50 meters per minute.  I have come to the point in my swimming where I feel something like a machine – I no longer have to think much about swimming, I just do it.

This is a marked difference to when I started five months ago.  Then, swimming took a lot of thought: don’t kick so much, hold your arms a certain way, breathe at this time.  The first six weeks or so, I dreaded swim practice and I would feel physically ill right before practice started.  I can’t pinpoint exactly when that feeling went away, but as I felt more confident in the water, it decreased.

I included the last paragraph because I hope it encourages anyone who is thinking about taking on a physical challenge but feels daunted.  It does not happen all at once, but it does happen.

We Did It!

Just a quick note to let you know that I hit my fundraising minimum this morning.  Thanks to a $200 donation from the best mother ever, my total now stands at $3,930!  I am currently running a virtual garage sale (basically, I listed a bunch of stuff on Craig’s List) so this number should get a bit higher before all is said and done.

Woo hoo!  Thanks to everyone who made this possible.  I can not express how blessed I feel by everyone’s support – through both donations and words of encouragement. 

Don’t worry, this isn’t the last blog post.  I’ll keep up until after the race.  And, since this blog is really about tackling new projects, perhaps I’ll keep writing once I decide on my next big adventure.

Woot!