officially a triathlete!

Yesterday was the Jacksonville Sprint Triathlon and I survived! Zak and I rode up to Jax with my friend Jenn, who also did the triathlon, and her husband, Adam, and were able to stay with friends of theirs. They live about 45 minutes away from Little Talbot Island State Park, so we got up at 5 Saturday morning, loaded the bikes, and drove out for the race. The sun was beginning to rise as we got to the race site, and we picked up our registration packets and checked in for the race. In our packets we had our race numbers to pin on our shirt, a sticker for the front of our helmets, and a sticker for the bike. We also got a swim cap, coded by color for each age group. Mine was lucky yellow!

Afterwards, you went to the body-marking area where they wrote our numbers on both arms, both legs, and put your age group on the back of one leg. I had an 'N' for novice.

Before the race, we had to rack our bikes in the transition area. You hang the bike by the seat on a horizontal rack, and then set up your towel, socks, sneakers, and helmet to be ready for after the swim. Around 7:30 we all went down the boardwalk for the first wave of racers to begin. Each wave started about 3 minutes apart and were sorted by men and women over 39 and under 39. My wave included novice (people who have never done a triathlon before), clydesdale (larger men) and athena (larger women).

When the siren went off to begin the race we ran into the ocean until it was deep enough to swim. The course was 100 meters out to a buoy, 200 meters parallel to the shore, and 100 meters back into shore. I was ready for the distance because I've been training in the pool, but swimming around and on top of a bunch of people was interesting. Also keep in mind that my group included clydesdale, men over 200 pounds, so I was trying to maneuver myself past them, and avoid being kicked. It was really hard to swim with the waves rocking you, no visibility through your goggles, trying to stay on course, and getting salt water in your mouth. I finished the swim fine, but when I got out of the ocean my mouth was tasting very dried out and salty! Not a nice feeling to begin running with, but it was time to begin the transition.

We ran up the beach, across a boardwalk, through the parking lot, and into the transition area, all in bare feet. Once we got there we had to take off our swim cap and goggles, put on shirt, socks and sneakers, clip our helmet before you unracked the bike, and run the bike through to the next transition line. I was afraid I would forget something, but it all went by too quick for me to think. From the transition, we began the 10 mile bike.

The bike was the most boring part for me because by this time most of the racers were pretty spread out. I felt like I was by myself for the majority of the ride, so I couldn't pace myself very well. I thought I was in last place, but I realized when I reached the turn around point that there were plenty of people behind me, I just didn't see them. After the 10 miles, we rode back into the same transition area, reracked the bike, and took off for a 3 mile run.

I knew that this transition would be difficult, but I had NO idea! My legs felt like jelly. By this point, the sun was up, and it was really, really hot. There was absolutely no shade on the run, and 1 water station 1/2 mile into the run, and the same one, 1/2 mile from the finish line. That means we had no water for 2 miles. I ended up alternating running with speed walking just because I couldn't make my legs do anymore. I was SO happy to see the finish line and get a bottle of cold water. My goal was to finish in under an hour and a half and I finished in 1 hour, 19 minutes, so I was very excited!!!


Zak was my personal cheerleader, and official photographer. He got some great shots of Jenn and I before the race, and stayed at each transition point to get some sweet action shots. You can see all the pictures here. Afterwards, we hit Cracker Barrel for an amazing after-the-race feast. We noticed that people were looking at us funny and couldn't figure out why until we realized that Jenn and I still had our numbers written all over us. We think that they suspected us as prison inmates, or mental patients on release for the weekend. After stuffing ourselves we headed back to gville to relax. All in all, a great, although somewhat exhausting, weekend!