The Day After The Day After Tomorrow

That's how long until my first triathlon. I guess I'm as well prepared as I can be. It's only a 400 meter swim, which is equivalent to eight laps in the pool. Except this is in open water. Thankfully, the husband, my BFF, and I went to an open water swim clinic a couple Sundays ago. The husband has done a couple open water swims, but Jen and I had not. As we were getting into the lake we were both wondering what we had gotten ourselves into. I was really glad I went to the clinic, if nothing else to just experience swimming in lake water instead of the pool. It really is much different, then throw in having to turn corners around buoys, as well as massive amounts of people swimming around you. Yikes! I did get kicked in the face once, which was my biggest fear. Not much you can do but keep on swimming. I had a hard time sighting while at the lake because so much of the scenery looked the same for most of the swim. Swimming back into shore I had an easier time sighting off a tree. I'm not too worried about the sighting aspect, but who knows. That may very well change once I'm in the water. I did a few 400 meter swims in the pool at the gym earlier this week, and my times ranged from 8.5 minutes to 10 minutes. I've pretty much fallen in love with biking. It makes me feel like a little kid. :) The longest ride I did in preparation for the race was 14 miles. We live near an Indian reservation, which it turns out is a great place to ride because there is very little traffic, it's totally flat, and there are no stop signs or stop lights. Too bad I just found out about it for my last three rides. I did three brick workouts where I went straight from biking to running. Last week's was supposed to be a 12 mile ride and then a 5K run, just like the tri. Jen bailed on the run (she had a decent excuse, she'd been sick the whole week leading up to it), and I was going to but decided to do at least a little. I only did 1.5 miles, but at least it was something. When we did a 10 mile ride followed by a two mile run, the run went pretty smoothly. I was a lot faster than I thought I'd be, averaging under 11:00/mile. My first mile was 10:30, I don't remember what the second was. It's a weird sensation to start running off the bike because you feel like you're going SO SLOW. If I had a nicer (i.e. lighter weight) bike, I could shave several minutes off my bike time. I generally have an average pace somewhere between 4:15 and 4:30, with a few of the miles at a 4:00 pace. (The husband tells me that cyclists talk in terms of MPH, but I run and talk in terms of pace, so that's what I stick with. that and I can't convert times like 4:15 or 4:30 into MPH in my head quickly) We drove the bike course last week, and it's definitely hillier than what I'm used to riding. Not hilly, by any means, but it's not flat like when I bike around my house. I'm not sure how that will affect my time/speed. if I can stick with a 4:30 pace, that should put me around 54 minutes for the bike portion. I really don't know what to expect for the run. It's a flat course which is great, but my running lately has been awful. I just haven't been feeling it. I don't know if it's because I had such great runs when we were in CA for spring break and my runs here haven't been as good, so I'm just discouraged? I don't know, but it's been awful. I have had good runs the last few times I've gone out at least. I had originally hoped to keep about a 12:00 pace for the run portion, assuming I'd just be tired at that point, but since I kept about a 10;30 pace for the two mile run brick workout, I'm fairly confident that I can do faster than 12:00. Plus as my husband pointed out, I might as well go balls to the wall and give it all I have, it's not like I'm working out the next day. Regardless, I'm estimating a 35:00 total run time for the 5K. Not super fast by any means, and ideally I'm hoping to finish it faster than that. Overall I'm hoping to finish in about 1:45. I had originally estimated 2:00, but when I said something about it to the husband he thought that was way too high a time and I could do it in less time. When I really calculated it out, I agreed. I'm hoping the transitions don't take me too long, but I don't think they will since I don't have cycling shoes. Once I'm done with the swim I'll put on my socks and running shoes and helmet, then for T2 (the bike to run transition) all I have to do is remove the helmet, throw on my running hat and running belt thing and I can be off. I go back and forth between excited and nervous, but I guess that's to be expected of any race. I know I can do each leg on its own just fine, so I think if I go into it thinking of each event as its own thing (i.e. "I'm just swimming 400 meters" then "I'm just going on a 20k bike ride" then "I'm just doing a 5k run") it won't be as bad. And it will be pretty freakin' awesome to cross that finish line and be a triathlete!!