loveliness.: tri-harder

I've wanted to do a triathlon for as long as I can remember. And by wanted to do, I guess I thought about it abstractly in the same way you would think "I'd like to have the power of flight" or "I'd like to be able to wear 6" heels all day and not want to die". Things that are nice in theory, but basically impossible.

I even had triathlon down on the list of life goals I made when I was 13, but I really never thought I would do it. Luckily I had a really good partner to do it with. We didn't train anywhere nearly as much as we should have, but we did eat a lot of carbs the day before, and we bought oreos to bribe ourselves with when things got tough during the race.

The swim was by far the worst part, my goggles were leaking, I got kicked a few times and I swallowed so much salt water that I had a sore throat the next day, but we actually did the swim almost twice as fast as we had planned. The transitions were a bit shaky, when I got off the bike to start the run I felt like a newborn baby giraffe, wobbling around, but after the first few kilometers it was not bad.

I'm so glad we decided to do it, we were definitely nervous going into it, but as soon as the gun went off and we started going, that stuff kind of fell away. You forget about the other people (when they aren't kicking you in the knee) and just concentrate on yourself and getting through that next section.

All in all, it was a great experience, and it was actually pretty fun. If you had asked me the day after I ran the Marathon if I would ever do another one, I would have punched you in the face. But honestly, I would definitely do another triathlon, and I'm excited to start looking around for my next challenge.