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Why Tri?

As I've detailed in a previous post, I started learning to run because of marathon weekend at Disney World & my desire to get that elusive mickey mouse medal. Probably a year after my running journey began, I head about triathlons. It sounded like a challenge. I had been a lifeguard for 5 years in my college years, and was a pretty strong swimmer, and now I was a decent runner, but one thing was missing. I didn't know how to ride a bike!

Well, I knew how to ride a bike, but I hadn't ridden one since my early biking days as a kid, when I had a white with grey & pink splatter painted Huffy that I rode around the neighborhood. I couldn't even decide if a triathlon would be for me, since I didn't even currently own a bike. I put a triathlon on my "to-do someday" list, and moved on with my running. Last year, I started seriously thinking about it again, but the bike thing was really getting to me. I decided to buy a road bike & woah, did I realize they were expensive!   I wanted at least a year to learn to ride it before trying to do so in a race type setting.

I was not anticipating a triathlon this year. I rode my bike once in april, then had major foot surgery April 19. I was in a special boot, unable to fully weight bear for 2 months, out of work for 3 months. I was originally told that I wouldn't be able to run for 6 months (I had a small panic attack & cried), but I started at an easy jog about 10 weeks post op. As I worked up my jogging, I started looking for a 5K to do in august or september. When I had trouble finding one, I happened to peek at the Danskin Triathlon website which I had visited in the past & realized they had the new england race in late september.

I figured since biking & swimming were low impact activities on my foot, the running combined with them would be ok. I contemplated signing up for a week, then bit the bullet & signed up for my first Triathlon! While I've spent a lot of money, and maybe haven't trained as much or as hard as I would have liked, I'm really excited for it all to be here.

I'm a competitive, goal oriented person. Having races to look forward to motivates me. I like having that deadline, the knowledge that someone is waiting for me to finish a race. Now lately, I'm motivated by all of you keeping me on track (don't count the cake I had at lunch today!).

I'm off to pack for my practice run tomorrow. I tried on my wetsuits and came up with a winner, I'll update you all tomorrow on that, and how the rehearsal went!

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