My First Team Triathlon
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Many of you have heard me talk about training for this team triathlon that I participated in on Saturday. If you were to ask any of my close friends, you’ll hear that I had days where I didn’t want to do it and there were days when I was genuinely excited. So here’s the re-cap…
The Night Before
Chad and I left immediately from The Global Leadership Summit to go pick up Faith, Betsy, and Jessie and made pretty good time as we drove down I-65 towards Columbus, IN. We made it in time for a pre-race festival which included picking up our team packets, a cookout, music, and a couple of guys who were tuning up bikes. When we were done with that, we checked into the hotel and went to run some errands.
Our first stop was Wal-Mart because Betsy needed a water bottle for the race. Little did I know how much fun we would have in the Columbus Wal-Mart. We found a water bottle for Betsy, but we found so much more… including hula hoops! That’s right ladies and gentlemen, for the next ten minutes or more, we had a hula hoop contest in the middle of Wally World.
Faith discovered that she was better at it than she thought, while Jessie learned that she could hula multiple hoops at one time, and that Betsy flaps her arms like a chicken when trying to hula hoop. Ha ha! 
From there we went to Applebee’s, which is one thing Chad is trying to make into an annual tradition. Once we had that settled, we went back to the hotel and headed straight for bed.
Race Day
If you were to ask me how I was feeling race morning, I was fairly impartial. I didn’t feel great, but I didn’t feel bad either. After taking in a pre-race breakfast, we headed for the triathlon course. We made it just in time for Betsy and I to put our bikes on the rack and to head down to the water for our pre-race meeting. There was nothing too special about the meeting which only lasted about ten minutes.
After the meeting was when I began getting the pre-race jitters. This was my first bicycle race and in addition to the typical pre-race jitters, my anxiety started to creep up on me. When I’m super anxious, the last thing I need are people all up in my space in their Speedo gear and swim caps, so as people headed toward the water for the first wave of swimmers, I went off to somewhere quiet to calm my nerves.
As I started to feel better, I headed to the transition area to meet up with Betsy and wait for Chad and Faith to finish their leg of the triathlon. I really started to get anxious and told Betsy that I really wanted to back out because I knew that would ease the anxiety I was feeling (not because I didn’t think I wouldn’t survive the bike ride). Fortunately I got up enough nerve as Chad crossed the timing pad and unstrapped the timing chip from his ankle. I strapped on the timing chip and chased after Betsy who had a few second head start on me.
Once I was out of the transition area and on my way, my nerves eased up quite a bit. Betsy and I had a good pace going and within the first couple of miles we went down a hill that had us going around 30 mph, which was AWESOME! At first I thought Betsy was sticking with me to be nice, but it turns out that we were equally paired up: sometimes she’d have the energy to lead, sometimes I’d take the lead. Everyone that we rode with was so nice and courteous and we even had people along the bike route to cheer us on, including the police department (thanks guys!).
We had to push ourselves going up numerous hills, but we still had fun. There was even a dog running alongside the bicyclists for a while which made me laugh. As we went over the final hill, I gathered up my last burst of energy and headed for the home stretch. As we got close to the timing pad, they instructed us to jump off our bikes and run over the pad so that it could read the timing chip. Betsy got a head start on me, but somehow I kind of knocked her off-course and I went over the pad first. 17.5 completed.
Andrew and Jessie did the last leg of the race, which was running around a three mile course. Those two really didn’t train a lot and I think they were more concerned about having a good time. This led Andrew to run like a raptor during part of the race (see video on left), which actually drained more of his energy rather than helping him.
They stuck together during the entire race and like true Taylor University grads running (or walking) any type of loop, they crossed the finish line holding hands.
So how did we end up in The Pioneer Women versus The Pioneer Studs? Not surprisingly, we tied at 1:54:27. This didn’t surprise us since we stayed together at each leg of the race. The official standings show that the girls beat us by 1/100th of a second, the guys are fine with that, it was a good race!
Celebrate Good Times, Come On!
To celebrate, we went to a Columbus landmark called Zaharakos Ice Cream Parlor for lunch. The food was okay, but dessert and the atmosphere was pretty sweet! If you’re in Columbus, you should check it out!
So there you have it friends, my first team triathlon. I think I’ll remember it for all the training I put in, all the complaining I did to Faith and Betsy about not wanting to do it, and just the overall satisfaction of completing with a decent time (Betsy and I completed the biking portion in 59 minutes). Overall, I’m glad I did it and really enjoyed biking through the countryside, even with those **bleeping** hills. Ha ha! Below are just a handful of pictures we took. Enjoy!
