We'll start with swimming. I taught myself how to swim when I was a kid. My dad lived by the beach and I was in the water almost every day in the summer. My senior year in high school, I got it in my head that I wanted to be a lifeguard. I saw a posting on the school bulletin board and for some reason thought, that seems like a good idea. I still remember that swim test. I'm pretty sure we only had to swim 200m, with no time limit, and by the end I thought I was going to die - I had never actually tried to swim laps before that day. (Sidenote: Make sure you have an appropriate swimsuit for swimming laps - my sweet ass neon blue and green Body Glove one piece of at least 5 years of age wasn't really up for the challenge. On my last lap I realized that the front had enough drag to end up around my ribs with my breasts completely exposed. I was so focused on not drowning I hadn't noticed until the end, though I don't think my instructor minded much.) I eventually began swimming enough over the next few years that I was relatively competent at it, though I still had no training or technical skill.
Jump to my next athletic milestone - running my first mile. I was absolutely one of those kids in high school that failed this portion of the Presidential Fitness Test. I could barely make it 100m before I had to walk. So in college, I decided to get in shape. I actually found a Navy Seals training book and used it as my guide to improve my running, swimming and strength (cause that seemed like a good idea...). After weeks and weeks of building up, I finally ran a whole mile. I still remember that night. I was telling everyone I could think of. I was so excited I didn't even care that it was kind of embarrassing that I couldn't run a mile prior to that. I started jogging and could make it about 3 miles before wanting to die. I maintained that pace and distance for the next 9 years or so. There was a brilliant day one summer in Arkansas right after a cooling rain that I managed to knock out 5 miles, and that was never repeated.
On to the bike. I loved riding my bike as a kid. It brought such freedom. I loved the way it felt to fly down hills. I remember crashing, a lot, and it never really phasing me. There was one crash in particular that I think I will always have an extremely vivd memory of. I had a blue Huffy BMX bike. I was riding down the hill in front of our house as fast as I could go. This hill had speed bumps, the wide sloping kind that you could ramp off of if you had enough speed. And I did. Unfortunately, on this particular run, my shoelace had come untied. It somehow managed to wrap itself around the pedal as I was spinning my little heart out until I finally got to the end of the lace. My foot was effectively attached to the pedal, and with no more slack in the lace, I could not move my foot forward. As I approached the speed bump, my only options were to try and brake or just let it happen. I went with the latter. My foot was at such an awkward angle that there was no way I could manage the landing. I came off the bump and went down hard (or "ate shit" as the kids say). Yet somehow, this didn't phase me. I laid on the ground for a minute, mentally assessing myself to see if anything was broken. After coming to the conclusion that there were no serious injuries, I got up and immediately went home to get cleaned up before my Dad or Stepmom came home (it was a rather serious offense to get injured in our house, so as long as you didn't absolutely have to go to the hospital, you did everything in your power to hide what happened). And the next day I was back on my bike. Man I miss that. Having no fear as a child. Being able to wreck one day and have no thought of it the next. More on that later...
So this triathlon idea. I can't take credit for this. This was all Matthew. I met my boyfriend Matthew about 2 years ago. Oddly, I was not unfamiliar with the sport or lifestyle. When I lived in Arkansas, my friend John Williams was competing in Ironman races. I thought he was insane. I would see him training and think, why would you ever want to do that to yourself (what seems like a good idea to you will not always seem like a good idea to others). I also had a friend in San Francisco who did triathlons, so this world Matthew was living in was not completely foreign, I just had no interest. I had decided I wanted to get a bike, and Matthew helped me figure out what kind I liked and which one to buy. I was talking about trying to run a half marathon in the fall with some friends and asked him to put together a training plan for me. Oddly enough, a nice Sprint tri fit very well into this schedule (well played, Mc Fadden). And when he brought it up, I though, why not? It seemed like a good idea. And it was.
I completed my first Sprint triathlon in Santa Cruz on August 8, 2010. My primary goal: to finish (and to not be last). My stretch goal was to run the entire 5k without walking (by far my weakest event), and I did it. I'm not going to go into the details of that day. This post is already long enough, and a lot of those thoughts and memories are things I either can't put into words or don't want to. I ran across that finish line feeling better than any other time I can remember. I almost felt like a kid again, having done something that made me so happy and thinking anything was possible. If you had asked me if I could have done that 5 months earlier, I would have laughed in your face. But I did it, and I didn't suck. I was hooked. I have no dreams of completing an Ironman distance race, or even a marathon. But after that race, I won't discount the possibilities.
Triathlon = Good Idea.
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