In the Beginning

The date was May 15th, 2011. I was at my in-laws house and had just eaten a wonderful Sunday dinner.  I was on facebook and I was looking at a friend's photos.  They had a triathlon suit on.  I told my husband how amazing it is that people compete in triathlons.  He mentioned it wasn't that big of deal.  It was then that I learned that not ALL triathlons are an Ironman distance.  I went straight to Wikipedia and read all about the different triathlon distances.  I immediately had a strong desire to complete a sprint distance triathlon.  I went to trifind.com and found some local triathlons.  I also noticed a link for a triathlon coach not 15 minutes away from my home.  I thought about it all night and couldn't get it out of my head.

The next morning I went to the coach's website, blonderunner.com and read as much as I could about her triathlon team.  I emailed her an entire slew of questions about how to get started.  Lora, aka "the Blonde Runner", emailed me back almost instantly and asked me to call her.  We talked for about a half an hour.  She told me based of my current fitness level I could complete a sprint distance tri in about 8 weeks.  My heart skipped a beat, I was so excited.  I committed to training with her.  She wanted to interview me to make sure it was going to be a good fit.  Looking back I'm very happy that I pulled the trigger on doing triathlons and didn't sit around and think about it.  I don't know if I would've gone through with it if I had sat on it. 

The next day was my interview with Lora.  She agreed to train me and we went over to the local recreation center to see how I was in the pool.  I hadn't swam since I was a kid so I naturally thought it was going to be the easiest part of the triathlon training.... right..... boy were my eyes opened as soon as I tried to swim my first 25 meters.  I realized at that moment I didn't even know how to swim.  My legs were flayling all about, I couldn't keep my head in the water and my arms were swinging around like a drowning gorilla and I was out of breath.  I'm surprised that Lora didn't laugh or even giggle at me.  She gave me some awesome advice and my second attempt was much better. 

After that swim I started working out everyday towards my goal.  I had picked the Cache Valley Super Sprint as my first triathlon put on by onhillevents.com.  It was 9 weeks away and about an hours drive to get there. It's on!