I TRI'd it!

The other day Jason and Jess and I were tweeting about doing a #kcirb, which is a reverse brick.  I tweeted about how I was going out to do my first swim/run, and would that be called a #swib??  So the next day a woman in Scotland tweeted that she was intrigued, and asked me what that meant, since for her, it stands for Scottish Women In Business. 

I thought that was kind of funny.

Last night I went up to Oneida Shores with Jeannine and Gina to do my first open water swim, then practice my transition to the bike.  It was still almost 90 degrees at five o'clock, so it was good night to get into the lake.  We got there pretty early, there were about 150 people there, so we were able to talk to some of them about the best way to set up our bikes and ask about the swim.

As we were watching everyone else set up, I noticed that several people were wearing either water shoes, what looked like rubber socks, or duct tape on their feet.  I know that there are Zebra mussels in this lake, and they can really tear up your feet if you step on them.  So I started to get worried about that, the last thing I wanted was bloody shoes.

They set us up in waves of 50 people, and I saw Kristin as I went in.  Everyone was walking until the water was waist high before they dove in. A woman next to me asked me if this was my first time there, and I told her it was, and that I was nervous about the mussels.  She pointed out the spot where they start to show up, and instead of trying to pick my way through them, I decided to just start swimming. 

It went really well, although when I put my face in the water, the murky green color reminded me of the opening credits of True Blood, so that freaked me out.  I kept my head up for a while, and kept my eyes on the first bouey, passed that easily, and went straight to the second.  I was actually coming up on people so when I saw their legs I slowed down and went around.  I need to practice my sighting, I figured if I stayed with the group I'd go straight to the shore, but when I looked up, I realized I was making a circle away from shore.  So I straightened up, and swam until my chest hit sand.  I was really paranoid about those mussels.

The swim went fast, I thought it was 400 meters, but someone told me it was 600, which is even better.

I transitioned really quickly, I had my sunglasses in my helmet, and G-unit was already strapped to my bike.  I just put on my shoes, shorts, and fuel belt, since I still haven't bought a holder for a water bottle.  I'm feeling confident about my training, the only part that has been bugging me is the bike,  I aim to ride between 16 - 18 miles per hour, but because it's a mountain bike, it slows me down.  I lost track of how many people said "On your left" as they zipped on by me with looked like much less effort.

We did nine miles in about 40 minutes, which is slow, but what can you do.  We were dripping with sweat, it
was still very hot, but we went out and ran a mile. 

I don't know why I'm so hung up on how long it's going to take me to do this race.  It's a whole new thing for me, I've got to get grip and just do it.  If it takes me 2 hours, so be it, I just want to have fun. 

Remind me of that on August 7th, okay?