Official results

The official results of the triathlon:

Final time: 2 hours, 8 minutes, 40 seconds. I placed 7th in my age group.

Swim time: 28 minutes, 44 seconds. This is not particularly surprising, since my goal was not to swim fast, but to complete the course without getting any brown, icky water in my mouth, which required a lot of stopping and spitting.

1st transition: 4 minutes, 16 seconds. Not too bad, since I had to peel off my shirt and put a (mostly) dry replacement on. I also added a fanny pack that had a water bladder, energy bars and a gel (they taste disgusting, by the way).

Bike ride: 56 terrifying minutes, 2 paralyzing seconds. At first I thought I must have missed a loop when I rode this, because people kept riding by me, and I swear one person passed me twice. Turns out a bunch of people got lost. It’s not surprising; who would have guessed the trail really and truly went over huge rock slides and through deep arroyos? I checked the race map later and could see that there were no other loops (I also asked one of the people working the race to make sure before I got off the course). So, I think I made 12 terrifying miles in just under an hour primarily because I followed directions and stayed on course. The real story is that I had to walk the bike down cliffs and sometimes had to just close my eyes, let go of the brakes and hope I didn’t die on the other side. By the end of the course I was sliding around corners and I did a bad-ass finish onto the sandy beach, where Marti caught my fat bouncing on camera as I ran the bike to the transition area.

2nd transition: 56 seconds. Pretty fast, eh? It went like this: park the bike, drop the helmet, put on my trusty ball cap and start running. Except — oh yeah, the fanny pack. With a liter of water in it. But what’s another couple of pounds? I am breastfeeding, after all. So, I ran a 5K trail, over rocks, through sand, on concrete, on pavement, and I did it in…38 minutes. Sound familiar?

5K run: 38 minutes, 46 seconds. This is not an impressive time, of course, except that it’s as fast as I ran the first 5K of the season and it came after swimming half a mile and mountain biking another 12.

So, over all, a good showing for a first triathlon. Ben was a real trooper, cheering and helping, and he made good use of the sand while I was racing.
Maya was her beautiful self, pictured here smiling, despite her lip. She wasn’t too happy with mama, though — the bottle hurt her lip, so she wouldn’t eat, and was more than ready for me to cross the finish line so I could feed her.

It might be a while before the next one: we blew a tire heading to this one and spent 2 1/2 hours on the road, waiting for a tire iron. Marti says I need to pace myself. My next race, however, will be a nice, easy 5K on November 5th. And hopefully, someday, all this running will win over the fat and I will actually lose a pound or two.