Holy Ravioli!!! That was so stinkin' hard and so stinkin' beautiful at the same time. :) * A quick note before I begin (before any of you think I did better than I did): There was only 17 women TOTAL who were crazy enough to pay for this crazily satisfying punishment! :) Here are the highlights (and I am not checking for typos so BEWARE ... I am pretty tired): THE SWIM: I have never felt so panicky in my life!!! Even though I knew the swim portion went by gun time I lined up towards the back and the side in hopes of avoiding getting my body trashed by others. Should have gone to the VERY back! About 200 meters into the swim I got kicked HARD right in the nose. So hard that I thought I was going to pass out. I felt so dizzy and yet got kicked over and over again. At one point some guy swam directly on top of me. I went completely under and panicked a bit because he wouldn't let me back up (there were people on both sides of me). Stupid boy!!! Long story short though: there were times when I loved the swim ... others times were I thought I would not make it!! It took me much longer than I thought I would. I think my swim itself was about 41-43 minutes. My transition at that point was about 10 minutes!!!!!! Partly because I was so dizzy that I had a hard time getting my wetsuit off and getting everything good to go for the bike! THE RIDE: The uphill never ended!!!! Over 3600 feet climb. The scenery was insanely beautiful!!! Red, orange, yellow EVERYWHERE!!!! My goal on the bike was to go sub 3 hours. I was thrilled when I rode it in 2:42:xx. The best part was that I only fell ONCE (with only about 1.5 miles to go). I did come out of my clips a few times though. Sometimes intentionally other times to just avoid disaster. I saw a lot of nasty falls. I feel very fortunate to have had my only fall on some nice soft dirt! The worst part (for me) was that my gum came flying out of my mouth around mile 7 and got stuck on my right brake. Before I knew it was there I had smeared it on there good. So every time I braked my hand felt nasty!!! :) A very tough ride but it I felt so amazing having conquered my fear!!! THE RUN: This is where I thought I would KILL it!!! NOT SO MUCH!!! About 1000 feet of climbing on what felt like zero glycogen. I wanted to run fast but I absolutely could not. Every part of my body was exhausted! The run was 6.3 miles (last year it was only 5.9 so I was hoping for that but they changed the course a bit). Aid stations at about every mile. I had not run the course but had thought that I could do it in about 50 minutes. Ummm WRONG!!! My time was 1:04:xx. At a 10+ pace you would think that people would be passing me everywhere. Nope. We were all just dead tired!!! I have no idea how some of the men pros ran it in 43 minutes. INSANE! The last couple of miles were mostly downhill. That was a nice gift!!! :) FUN to have Ry, the kids, Annie and Nic (and their kids) to cheer me on!!! I am so glad that I did this. It was so out of my comfort zone but I did it. I love that feeling!!! For my 1st place in my AG they gave me a nice visor and a box of PowerBar gels. Cool!!! :)
| 
