Last weekend, I did my second triathlon, in Lake Havasu, Arizona. Our first triathlon was a couple of years ago, in Honolulu, Hawaii.
This time my mom, my sister and I all did it together. I had been thinking it was time to start training for something all summer, I am a very goal-oriented person so I have to keep setting up new challenges for myself or I get bored and lazy.
I started training in August, but gave myself until September to sign up, to make sure I had at least started training by then. Training was a lot easier this time, since we had a pool in our building complex in Arizona, I could swim almost every day. When I was training for the first one, I had to go down to the local community pool, and fight off 13 year old SPEED swimmers for lane time a couple times a week.
I also biked and ran a few days a week, so I felt like I was pretty ready for it.
The Thursday before the race, we drove up to Vegas, and spent Thursday night and Friday night creeping around there. I didn’t go to sleep until 5 am on Thursday, and woke up quite ill (it’s always the red wine) the next day, which maybe isn’t the mark of a serious athlete, but my family is really fun, and we don’t get to see each other all the time, so we tend to take full advantage when we do.
On Saturday, we drove down to Havasu, picked up our bikes (we had rented them before hand) and then rode them to our hotel. Unfortunately, we all through our purses (with our phones) into the truck while we were riding, and we got left behind about 15 seconds after we left the parking lot. So we got to drive around for a bit, and finally ask a nice man at a gas station for directions.
Once we finally found the hotel, we went to pick up our race packets, the race started and finished at London Bridge beach park, and then went to the store to load up on snacks. We did a cross country half marathon in San Francisco a few years ago, and the only thing that got me through it was an Oreo at the rest stops every few miles, so I made sure to have some of those on hand.
Also when we did our Mt. Rinjani trek, I gave myself one Oreo for every mile I successfully climbed (it was SO hard). At least I have a sophisticated rewards system?
The morning of the race was pretty chilly, we had packed up and put on all of our numbers the night before, so we just jumped on our bikes and rode down to the beach park. We had about 45 minutes to get set up, get our wet suits on, and chat with other racers, before we went down to the lake to start.
We were doing the Olympic Tri, which is approximately 1 mile swim, 25 mile bike ride, and 6 mile run.
The swim was fine, although it was definitely the worst part. It always is. This tri was a lot smaller than our first one, so we weren’t getting kicked and swam over, which I appreciated, but the wet suits we had rented were pretty thick, and made swimming a little harder, and breathing as well. It felt like we were in the water forever, but we actually finished in pretty good time.
The bike ride went well, it was a pretty good course until the very end where we had to turn around to come back and there were 3 enormous hills that we had to go down, and then back up the other side. And I mean, enormous. I didn’t even feel comfortable going down the hill, let alone capable of riding back up the other side.
The run is always my favourite part, we put on some tunes and got it done. A few other runners said we looked like we were having way too much fun.
The whole experience was great, although I would definitely not do a triathlon alone. It’s way more fun when you have other people to commiserate with.
After the race, we went for drinks, and then made the three hour drive back to Phoenix. I was worried I would be sore the next day, but we all felt good enough for a marathon shopping session, before we eventually passed out collectively at around 8 pm.
