My first triathlon

This weekend I took the plunge, literally, and participated in my first sprint triathlon here in Minneapolis.  I won't say it was pretty, or that I did excellent, but I feel pretty good about my effort and the results. Mostly I was hoping to just finish, but I did have the goal of being done in under 2 hours.  Like I said, not really looking to win any medals.  :) 

The swim went a little worse than expected with me getting doused in the face over and over with water and struggling to get into a groove with my stroke and breathing.  So I struggled for what seemed like a long time, but it ended up only being about 18 minutes which was shorter than I expected.  I then made my way to my bike and got my gear on.  I was definitely moving slow at this point but got my shoes, shirt and helmet on and thought I'd just head out.  Of course, I dropped some of my energy jelly beans and had to scoop them up, but after that the bike was good.  I finished up the 15 mile ride in about 50 minutes with no troubles at all.  The biking was never a worry for me and even though I might not be super fast, I knew I could finish and probably in reasonable time. 

My transition to the run was pretty simple as I traded my helmet for a running hat and added my running bib then headed out onto the trail.  I have a hard time estimating my pace when I'm running in a crowd so I had no idea how I was doing until I finished, but I knew it was tough to keep going and I didn't feel like I could be going a lot faster.  I finished the 3.1 mile run in about 27 minutes which is a decent 5k for me even without having swum and run beforehand. 

So my total time ended up being just under 1 hour 45 minutes which was even better than I'd hoped for.  I LOVED the experience and I'll definitely be doing another one soon.  I definitely liked it much better than doing longer distance running (a half marathon has been my longest so far) and the variety during training is definitely more interesting for me.  I've got a lot of work to do on my swimming, but I'm actually looking forward to it.