1/3 of a cherry

I'm 1/3 less of a triathlon virgin.  If I had been a member of my sorority's "v" club, I would have been "parked halfway in the garage without pulling the car all the way in."  But I digress...

I did a triathlon relay!  A totally spontaneous decision made over Vodka Cranberries, but I'm so glad I did it.  It was when I was in Portland.  I mentioned to a friend of mine from high school that I would love to do a bike leg of a relay and he said he'd do the swim and thought he could find a runner and we were off to the races!

I rode quite a bit in Portland prior to the race (even did a half-century) but hadn't really done any hill climbing.  The day before the tri, we drove the course.  YIKES.  It was a 24 mile course broken up into three, 8 mile loops.  Half the loop was uphill, a fourth or so downhill and the rest fairly flat.  Those of you who know Portland - up Naito, up Barber, up Capital Hwy and then up Terwilliger.  Three times - Ouch.

So the night before the race I tried to be good.  Didn't drink.  Tried to sleep.  Totally didn't work.  I started to get a cough and sore throat about 8 p.m.  Every time I would try to sleep, I would cough and wake myself up.  Then I started to psyche myself out about not sleeping.  All in all I'd say I got an hour.  Wake up time was 5:15 a.m.

On the way to the race I checked my resting heart rate which is an indicator of your rest, health and training levels.  My resting heart rate is usually 57 or so.  That morning it was 93.  In other words I WAS FREAKING OUT.  I think I was more scared of the unknown than the physical challenge of it.  That and my friend from high school drowning because he hadn't swam in over 5 years and was going out with zero training (yes, we're crazy).

We got there and got marked up.  The left side is the bib number, 

the right your age:

The adrenaline factor is pretty amazing.  My tiredness

 seemed to be gone and I really wasn't thinking about my cold either.  Somehow, incredibly, my teammate finished the swim in good time without dying.  It was my turn.  I'll let the air out of the balloon now.  I did not finish in record time.  In fact, I was so worried about finishing that I held back a lot and finished with a pretty crappy time.  But you know what?  I'm good with that.  I had zero in the tank and that 3rd time up the hill was ugly.  But I did it.  Our runner rocked it and we ended up 7th out of not so many more teams (like 9).  But hey, we didn't train, and we did it to finish.

I'm not so freaked out by the whole process anymore and frankly pretty inspired by it all.  There were people out there in the Willamette River who had no business swimming but they were.  There were people 30 years older than me.  There were machine-like humans doing it so fast it made my head spin.  This 39 year old was just glad to be there.

Go Team Mojito!