Toyota US Open Triathlon

(Jen)

After my first triathlon, I was all for doing a second one. In fact I was ready to go right away. But over this last month as my triathlon began to draw near, I felt less and less ready. In fact I went on vacation a week before to Seattle – which was so much fun! I will post a couple of photos for you to see (you can see my face book for more photos – I will try and post them soon).

Anyway I felt ill prepared for this triathlon and not as excited about it. However, I had already committed.

The night before the race, Stephanie and I prayed together that God would just get all the glory from it and just help my body feel good and strong and that I would just have fun. So on the day of the race, most of the other girls I knew doing the triathlon felt the same way. I was nervous but finally started to get excited.

Well the swim went great. I felt really strong on it and this time they had us spread out more so I didn’t have someone swimming on top of me like last time. But I did run into several guys that were struggling with the swim. They had started in the wave before us, so it was like a wall of guys. Weird. Anyway after getting around all the people, I felt really good.

The bike was good. The first huge hill was really tough and I didn’t think I was going to make it because we just came off of a turn so there was no momentum! After I passed the second large hill I knew I was going to make it. The bike ride was 25 miles but I felt good the whole way. I did see some guy get really hurt right in front of me. I felt so bad for him because he fell so hard. I heard that they had to get him medical attention because he was hurt so bad. Then I almost got hit by a car that was tired of waiting in traffic! They had the right two lanes blocked off and all the traffic was in the left lane so I guess they got tired of waiting and turned out of line and squealed their tires and turned right in front of me! I was relaxing my arms at the moment so my hands weren’t on my brakes! Needless to say I squealed because I thought I was going to hit the car. But thankfully God was protecting me.

I was tired for the run but did fine. I actually missed the sprint turnaround and ran an extra 15 minutes or so. I knew I had missed it but when I asked someone else he said no and he was actually looking for it too. Well needless to say we both missed it. He was mad, but I was like….oh well, I just burned some extra calories. What can you do at that point, you know?

Anyway I felt great through the whole race and had a lot of fun. I waved at people, talked to them along the way, and tried to smile when I knew my picture was taken. Last time I was more all business until I got through with the race and partied. This time I just wanted to enjoy the entire race.

I would definitely want to do more races in the future. But we will see where the Lord leads. It did take me a couple of days to get over soreness this time, probably since I hadn’t biked in almost 2 weeks before the race. =)