A T-shirt turned me into a Triathlon Junkie

So on to the fun stuff, I figured I would start this to chronical my fight to finish my first triathlon...and to have a place to get out everything on my mind.  I know my husband, family and friends love me, but there is only so much they can stand hearing about my last swim, bike, run splits...which I'm sure sounds like gibberish half the time in my adrenaline/endorphine fueled recaps. 

I decided to do a triathlon when I heard there was a local one in town, the conversation came up over a t-shirt at run club.  Who knew someone wearing a t-shirt could change my life, pretty drastically.  I knew I wouldnt be able to run as much as I wanted coming back from the stress fracture, and I latched on to this idea of triathlon. 

The local triathlon is a sprint in July, and that seemed daunting at first.  I was riding on the stationary, knew I would need a bike and was overwhelmed by the selection of bikes, components, road bike, tri bike, rearsets and derailluers.  I had no idea what any of it meant, luckily my husband had raced mountain bikes when he was younger and understood the language of bikes.  I ended up getting a Specialized Transition Elite. 

Now I used to play on the race track with my Yamaha R6 motorcycle...the thought of two wheels with no engine was a new concept for me.  Can anyone say clipless pedals...you actually want me to attach my feet to the pedals???  What if I fall over, what if they dont come undone.  All I could picture is a slow fall sideways, in front of a laughing crowd. 

Well turns out they are pretty easy to use once you get the hang of them...although that slow fall sure did end up happening.  Stopped to talk to some aquaintences on a ride...put the right foot down...bike decided it wanted to go left...luckily they didnt laugh...I dont know if I would have shown the same restraint :p

The bike has felt pretty comfortable so far, the swim is entirely another matter.  I never really had swim lessons, so my form is attrocious.  My endurance worse...the thought of 500 yards was a huge stretch when I would make it 25 across to the other side.  LOTS of work to do there.

I run 5k's pretty regularily so I wasnt worried about it, I would have to do a couple bricks to see how it feels off the bike, but at least I knew I wouldnt drown running. 

In true "Jenna-Caer" fashion, I started training much more than what is required for a sprint.  I already had my sights set on the Austin 70.3 in October.  I couldnt imagine what it would take for me to survive that swim and realize I would actually have to work on it, biking 56 miles....really??  The farthest I had gone was 20....at about a 14 mph pace...at that speed it would take me forever!

Now I've mentioned it before...I'm competitive...since I won that first 5k (1st female) and realized that I actually have some athletic ability that had eluded me through my school years I could not plan on doing a 70.3 just to finish.  I need to race it.  At this point I wasnt sure I could survive, never mind race so I had a lot of work to do.  So even though the only race I had commited to was a sprint I was putting in 10-12 hours of training with that 70.3 in mind...little did I know how much I would need those hours.