UCLA Tri

My first official tri!  Santa invited me to compete with her in the UCLA tri to celebrate her 32nd bday. When we first signed up we had planned to meet up once a week to workout and put many dry runs under our belt before the big race.  Unfortunately, our crazy work schedules didn't allow us to do so.  The week before we both got super sick.  I called off from work 2 days.  I know I needed the rest and my body needed the healing time.  I felt bad because we were short staffed at work, but I couldn't imagine getting better working 12hr graveyard shift. As the week went on I was afraid we weren't going to be able to do the triathlon.  However, I felt good enough to do the race.  I invited my family to cheer us on.  God knows we both needed it!!

 

I sent this the morning of to my fam so they can easily ID me.

 



We stopped by a Starbucks on the way up to the race.  Man, this place was NICE! It had a cozy fire and comfy chairs.  We enjoyed pre-race breakfast as we laughed about our jitters.

As we got on campus, we made a left up this street and it was this never ending hill.  We got a little nervous when we saw cones and thought "is this part of the race?" I seriously had this nervous, uncontrollable laughter.  Santa looked at me and I knew we were thinking the same think... "what the F did we get ourselves into???" 

Most tri's have only one transition area, but his one had two. For our first tri we picked a confusing set up and hilly course. The race started off with 400m swim into transition area #1.  Every person has an individual start time.  Santa and I were in the 2nd wave of competitors and damn near the last to enter the water.  When it was my turn to jump in the water I jumped in and froze.  I sunk to the bottom and landed on my knees. OUCH!!!  That snapped me out of it and I started to swim.  At turning points it would get congested and at one point this one SOB grabbed my legs twice and pulled me under the water.  I kicked him and said something vulgar.  I was in the slow lane.  Hello GO AROUND ME!

(These are my knees later on that night)

After the swim, we did 4 loops through the campus totaling 13 miles.  After my first loop I spotted my family.  I yelled out to them and they saw me.  Before I got too far away, I yelled "you will see me 3 more times!"  Seeing them made me feel pumped.  I looked done at my watch and set a goal to see them every 12 mins.  Knowing they were there helped me up those hills.

After the cycle portion we finished off with a 5K run.  I cam in before Santa, so went back and ran in with her. 

Can you believe medals weren't given out? This was a special occasion... our 1st triathlon, so I had custom medals made.  I ran around to sport stores, Michael's, Things Remembered and Tah Dah... this is what I came up with.

And... the icing on the cake, I came in 1st in my age division. Oh happy day!!

Afterwards we enjoyed yummy food at Newsroom cafe where we spotted Pauly Shore a few tables over.  We window shopped at some yuppy children clothing store and headed back home to rest up.