First Triathlon Ever

So while I can't quite call myself a triathlete yet, I did complete my first triathlon a few weeks ago (and in a relatively new development, my boyfriend is an Ironman-- I swear, to me this is cooler than saying, 'my boyfriend's in the band' -- or after Twilight, maybe now it's 'my boyfriend is a vampire', is to a high school girl. I am amazed by athletic prowess, despite, or because, I have so little of it myself).

But not sure how much these things count in terms of triathlon cred, though, because the tri in question was a super sprint, which means really short distances. It was indoors, which was nice considering Paris spring weather (it basically stays rainy winter until May when we have 1 week of glorious sunshine and we all later realise that that was our summer). The swim was 300 meters in a pool, then you biked 7K on a stationary bike and then the run was 2.5K outside.

It was a good experience but harder than I thought to do all 3 in a row.

And the swim was brutal.

I am not a confident swimmer, but this was bad even for me. I couldn't find a breathing rhythm-- I probably started out too fast, and was already self-consious because people were watching. I panicked and breast-stroked part of it. Not proud of that, but all future triathlon swims will probably be better than that, I don't think they can be worse. Despite being in shark-infested open water... So I'm really making an effort to swim more and Ironman gives me drills to do each time we go to the pool.

Biking was the best part. Mainly because I was so happy to be out of the pool and they had bike assistants who helped you adjust your bike before the start of the triathlon and gave you water and encouraged you during the race. They were lovely, I keep meaning to write to the triathlon organsers to tell them how much I appreciated the bike assistants.

The course for the run was very hilly, so I was pretty slow-- I think I also forgot it was a race and not a Sunday jog! I was the last one to get out of the pool, and couldn't quite make the time up on the bike, so I didn't see many other folks on the course. So hills and stairs to go up and I didn't make up a lot of time on the downhill, since the path was slippery from rain the night before.

So I somehow avoided being the last person in the competition -although I was the last on my team, but motivated for the next (gulp, longer) one and working on the swimming.