Taylor Love Triathlon

This past summer, I decided that I was going to sign up for a triathlon. The day I signed up, I had run 10 minutes without stopping... for the first time in my life. Oh yeah, and I didn't know how to swim laps.

I signed up for a "super sprint" triathlon called the Taylor Love Triathlon - the distances were: 300 yard swim, 18 mile bike ride, 2 mile run - for a triathlon this is nothing, for me this was a marathon.

I had 9 weeks to train, so I started with a bang, we had an intern living with us over the summer and she was able to teach me how to swim laps and pace my breathing. The other thing that was a big help to my training was my friend Georgia signing up to run a different triathlon with me three weeks after the Taylor Love.

Georgia and I trained together about 5 days a week, usually at 5:30am, and were shocked at how quickly we went from not being able to swim a lap or run for 5 minutes without gasping for air, to being in really good shape!

The morning of the race, I woke up to a sweet note from Brett on the white board by our front door:



The race was in Herndon, so I had told Brett to meet me at the finish line around 10am (when I was estimating I would finish).

Well, I WAY under estimated my ability. Even though I was one of the slower racers I ended up finishing closer to 9am! The whole thing took me about 2 hours! I was very impressed with myself, because my real goal was just to finish. However, I was sad that my boys weren't at the finish line waiting for me.

I did have friends, Meghan and Addy, racing with me so I wasn't totally alone though.

Here are some post race shots:




After the race I went back to see the awards ceremony (knowing I wasn't getting any prizes, but wanting to know how fast people were). The winners came in just over an hour!!! AMAZING!

The second best part of the day (after finishing), was when the second place male was called to collect his award. He happened to be sitting next to me and when he came back from getting his award he asked me if I lived in the area. Thinking he wanted directions or something, I said yes. He handed me his award, and said - "Here, maybe you can use this. I live out of town."

It was a 30 day free gym membership AND a $50 spa certificate. In my opinion, that totally made the training worth it!