I never knew what 'It's Miller time' really meant until today

Well there it is.. the finishers medal from the 2010 Ontario Women's Triathlon Series.  It's not my medal BUT I DID finish, more on that later.

So after all the talking and blogging and tweeting I finally shut up and did it.. can you believe that?  Now that I can't move a whole lot I figured I should throw up the race report before I forget all the gory details.  So go grab a coffee or a beer or what the hell, go do something else while I post the low down on how my day went.

I was awake ON TIME which is an event in itself and I had some coffee and part of a shake while I got my stuff all packed in the car.   How many times can you check to make sure you have everything before you are labeled OCD anyway?  On the drive to the park I noticed an SUV pulled over to the side of the road and a woman moving a rack of 2 or 3 bikes onto the shoulder from the middle of the road.  Can your bike rack really fall off your car without you knowing?  They weren't her bikes, she just drove away and I did contemplate stopping to see if they were good bikes because I'm in the market for a new bike but I decided to just keep going, I'm nice like that.
I got a great parking spot and all my crap together and wandered over to transition.  My coach somehow ended up walking beside me, that chick is everywhere I tell you, and had loads of encouraging words and funny stories.  I racked my bike (in the wrong spot, good morning) and chatted with some of my team that were milling around.  I was a bit shocked at all the ladies that were saying things to me like "I can't believe you are doing the sprint!!".  I know I'm not the fittest in the group and I know they didn't mean anything by it but quite honestly I couldn't believe many of them weren't doing the sprint.  I have seen the work they can do and I think there were less than 5 in my group doing the sprint distance.  Their statements were followed on with alot of 'go get em, you can do this, you are amazing!!'  I guess we all have our own journey to follow but with all the surprise and shock in their voices it got me even more scared, so scared I contemplated switching to the super sprint.  Well between that and seeing the swim course it's a wonder I didn't switch.  When I arrived the sun was shining but as the morning progressed we had some clouds and it got chillier but no rain, yay.

@JohnWProc (from twitter) had mentioned he signed his wife up for the sprint (what a peach) and to watch for the "big blue hand" (pardon?) sure enough, I saw him. I mean how the heck could you miss that!!!  They were there all decked out to cheer on the Mrs.  It was really nice to meet another twitter pal in person!  I begged him not to trash talk me on twitter while I was out on the course..

I was in the last wave and standing in the water waiting for the 'gun to go off' I was freaking out, trying not to think about it but how could you not with 750m of the longest swim I have ever seen stretched out before me.  Many of the ladies were convinced this was actually further than 750m.  I think the swim up to the first buoy felt the longest, like I would never get there but by the time I rounded the last buoy I was feeling ok.  Out of breath, drinking in ALOT of the lake and doing the crawl/breast stroke but I felt pretty good.  I have seen my chiptime results and am really happy with my swim time.

Out of the water, over to transition and it turns out I'm pretty quick getting my bike self together.  I have to say I was never so happy to be out of the water and was really looking forward to the bike portion.  I felt good on the bike, my quads felt like stones but other than that I felt good and wanted to go fast.  I have ridden this course a few times prior to race weekend and I felt even faster today.  It helps that traffic was limited and we had the police at every intersection holding off traffic.  The hills hurt, they always do and I was slow getting out to the turnaround but I made up MAD time on the way back.  It felt like 60 minutes out and about 10 minutes back.  Honestly I didn't want to get off the bike, I could have kept going.  I saw my chiptime results for the bike portion which includes both T1 and T2 times and I think I cut off at least 5 minutes off my usual time to ride the course, thank you hill training.

My run, as usual, sucked but I did it.  It was long and it hurt.  I guess it makes sense that I was tired from the swim and my legs were pretty tired from the bike.  I ran more than I thought but those freaking hills KILLED me.  I saw my chiptime results on the run and am not happy about that but it is what it is.  I am signed up for a running clinic starting in two weeks and I will get faster, I know I will.  My coach ran the last hundred meters with me and I crossed the finish line where my entire team was waiting for me, even the super sprinters that had finished ages ago  What a team!  I found out they were out of medals and at first I thought ah, who cares but as I looked around and saw everyone else with medals I was getting pretty bummed about it.  My teammate Kelly came over to me and put HER medal around my neck.  She said that I really deserved it and that she had come in first in her age group and would probably be getting something anyway.  I don't care how many medals you have, every one of them is well earned and for her to give hers to me was so incredibly kind it's a wonder I didn't start bawling on the spot.

The entire time during the swim I was thinking, oh lord make it stop, I'm never going to finish.  The entire time during the bike I was thinking YES this is awesome!!  The entire time during the run I was thinking ouch (it was much more colourful than ouch), this hurts but it's almost over!  At the end you turn around and look where you came from, you see the course and in my head it was the entire journey and think holy crap I just DID that.. I DID that.. and then i was just speechless.