TriDeltaThon

This past weekend I drove up to Knoxville, TN for a triathlon that the lovely girls of Delta Delta Delta put on every year. The drive to Knoxville is really pretty once you get past Cookeville. Especially once you get near the Smokey Mountains. After I checked in for the race and got my race packet, the friend I was staying with showed me around Knoxville. UT is definitely one of my favorite schools I've visited recently. Over the past month, I've been on an SEC tour of universities and UT has been by favorite so far. I didn't get to bed till almost midnight that night and I didn't sleep very well either. Sunday morning at 6am came really fast. I think a combination of sleeping in a different place and nerves about racing kept me up most of the night. When I got out of bed I could already hear the rain coming down outside. I knew it was supposed to rain but I thought it would hold off till the race was over with. This did NOT happen! By the time I got to the transition area to rack my bike and organize my stuff, the weather showed no signs up clearing up. I made my way over to get my timing chip and to get "marked up." Marked up is a term for getting your race number written on both legs and arms and your age on the back of your calf in permanent marker. They do this to keep track of who is completing each leg of the race and to see what age group the person is in when they finish the race. While I was getting marked up, the lady asked me how old I was. I began to say 23 but changed my mind and said 24! Even then, I still wasn't sure of how old I was. She had already started writing the 3 before I changed my mind! I completely forgot how old I was. I walked away from the line extremely confused and started counting from 1985 to 2009 on my fingers. This is supposed to happen when you're old... like 30's, 40's and up from there, not when you're 24! After making a complete idiot out of myself, I did a short warm up consisting of biking a mile, running a half mile, and swimming 50 yards. By this time my confidence was getting a little better because the last two weeks I didn't train because of an illness I was trying to get over. The swim was pretty intense. Over 400 people waited in line to jump in the pool every 5 seconds. We would swim down one lane of the Olympic sized pool, duck under the lane and swim back down till you completed all 8 lanes or 400 yards. People were literally swimming on top of each other because you would get jammed at the end of the lanes. I've never been kicked and hit so much in my life. I never thought swimming could be a full contact sport! Pulling myself out of the pool was a little tricky because I couldn't feel my arms and once I ran out into the transition area, the cold wind and rain was a complete shock. I've never biked in the rain before so I got a rude awakening when I tried to brake for my first hard turn. There was so much water on my breaks that I didn't break at the speed I'm used to. Not to mention the rodes were pretty slick and I didn't know exactly how fast I could take a turn. Today wasn't the day I wanted to test that out either. I averaged a decent pace on the bike all things considering. The strongest part of my race was the run. The run was 3 miles of uphill climbs and down hill sprints winding down tiny alleys and streets. I was hard to get into a rhythm with so many turns. My time for the run was exactly 20 minutes. That time placed me number 7 out of 400 people for the run portion of the race. Again, my transition times slowed me down some but overall, I was pleased with the result. The drive back to Nashville was extremely tough and I almost fell asleep at the wheel several times. Once I got home, I didn't even bother taking anything out of the car. I went straight to bed and slept from 5:45 pm to 7am the next morning! I guess I was pretty tired! Two triathlons down, several more to go. Next one is an Olympic distance triathlon in Memphis in May. Back to training hard again!