Skees Greets, Race 1 of 5

My tri season has officially started. Today was my first event of my season. I say 'my' because there are a TON of tri's going on and my goal this year is to finish the Texas Tri Series, which is a series of 5 races. The race today was a mini-sprint and it went really, really well!

Up and at 'em at 5am. My alarm went off and as usual I was an unhappy camper. (I really want to be a morning person...really...) Trainer got up at the same time (bless that man) and made me coffee and oatmeal. I had all of my gear packed up the night before so there wasn't too much to do, just eat, drink coffee and take care of 'business' before we left. All went according to plan.

Got to the race site with plenty of time to go, I wasn't nervous, this is a BIG improvement. I got my body marked (my race age is 37 even though I'm 36...that kind of sucked) by a fellow T3er who is coming back next week (yeah, love her), went into transition to find another T3er showing me where to rack my bike (next to more teammates!) and then my old lane buddy was there to give me some tips on setting out my stuff. Seeing so many people that I knew was AWESOME! I went to the timing chip people to write down my chip number since I have my own and then I got in the bathroom line...that was really, really long.

At my previous races I never got in the water until I had to, but this morning I did a little practice swim to check out the water, very glad that I did, it helped with the nerves. Then it was time for the race director to go through the course, the anthem and then 'POW' it started.

I was the third group in and I wasn't nervous until I got into the water. Still it was a big improvement over last year. My group started and it was chaos. I got kicked, hit, pushed back...you name it...it happened. The water was N.A.S.T.Y! I gulped some when I got kicked and I thought I would hurl right there...but I kept it down and kept going. I made it through the swim in under 10 min, that was my goal. *300 meters is not long enough for me to have a good swim.

On to the bike, my favorite part. I took over 2 min in transition, trying to get my damn socks on. I'll have to practice without socks... Anyway, I cruised through the ride, not going too hard so I could save something for the run. I was passing people along the way, riding @ 17mph avg for the ride and the last mile I was killing it. It was awesome. My second transition was less than 2 min, a good improvement. *I love the bike..hands down.

I ran out of transition for the run start and was miffed that there were stairs within the first .25 mile. WTF man? But, I got up the stairs, legs felt really heavy, and on to the course. It took me about 5-7 min to get my form and pace locked in. It was only a 2 mile run, so really...not too bad. I finished the run in under 20 min, I thought it would be 22 min. Very happy. *Need to run more!!

Overall a good first race! I was really happy with my overall time of 1:10:4-(something.) My official time is not posted, I don't know if that is because I used my own chip. Not that it matters, I know what I did and I know that this year is going to be a good one!