Saturday, February 16, 2008

Some New Firsts!

Today was a day of some new firsts! In celebration of Paul and Tim's 1/2 marathons 1/2 a world away, I ran my first olympic distance triathlon. I did a 1.5 km swim, a 40 km bike, and a 10 km run. I'd been wanting to do this for awhile, and finally felt my endurance was up for it.

The run, I actually did first and then had a cup of coffee with Cindy. It was a 30 minute transition time :-) Then it was onto the bike for a 13 km ride up to a great 50 meter pool that's in the next town. It's 30 baht for the swim (about $1). One of the big accomplishments for the day was swimming the 1500 meters. I have never swum that far in my life and let me tell you, it isn't easy! Ouch! That is a LONG way in water. It took 56 minutes to do the swim. I'm gonna be workin' on that time!

After the swim, I got back on the bike to finish the rest of the 40 km. At the 29 km mark on the bike, I had another first! A blow out! Cindy came to rescue me and I was able to switch out to my mountain bike tire rims and finish the remaining kms of the 40! Below is a picture of the infamous kilometer #29 tire blowout. It was loud and spectacular!




My first olympic distance triathlon wasn't fast, but it was fun! I said several prayers for Paul and Tim during the run and bike portions. During the swim I couldn't think!

Lots of cheers for you guys from Chiang Rai!

3 comments:

Mike said...

Love the idea of coffee in T1 :)

Great day's training/racing. The swimming will get easier. Have you seen/heard of the TI website. Lots of free snippets of technique DVDs. Might be worth a look. Google TI swimming. It's all about swimming with less effort rather than just trying to go faster. I love the technique.

Bad luck with the blowout .. but lucky you had the cavalry to rescue you :)

Congratulations on your first (of many) Olympic Distance tri.

Keep on blogging

Mike

Tim Wilson said...

Thanks for the prayers!

Good job on the tri, except I think you need to get that transition time down a little :)

Paul Tedder said...

You're incredible! Congratulations on the Olympic Triathlon. Your prayers and encouragement were appreciated, too!