Warning: This post may contain whining and complaining.

Phrases like "I hate you!" and "This is the worst day of my life!!" were being thrown around during the race. Now that I have 36 hours between myself and the tri I can say I'm glad I did it, but at the time I would have been glad to fall over dead to get out of having to finish it. It sucked people! Let me break it down.

The swim was hard. I knew it would be since I had only trained twice for it, in a pool, never in open water. But honestly it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. On a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being- I could do that in my sleep, and 10 being- I'd rather shoot myself in the head than ever do that again, I would give the swim a 7.

The bike. I also knew it would be difficult. In fact, it was the part I was most concerned about. To train I took a total of 3 spin classes and they in no way prepared me for the conditions of this race. The bike portion was 16 miles, (just as a side note, the next person who says "It's only 16 miles", "That's a short ride", "16 miles, that's easy", or any other version of that comment, I swear I'm going to slap their grandma. You've been warned!) 16 miles of monster hills, hills of which I mostly walked up... in cycling shoes. If you're not familiar with cycling shoes, they have a metal clip on the bottom of them that clips into the petal of the bike. They are made for cycling. They are not for walking. As I approached a hill I tried to build up as much speed as possible to carry me up the hill, but no amount of pedaling was enough. At some point on the hill, usually pretty early on, the bike would slow and then just stop, at which time I had no choice but to get off and walk up the hill. So on that same scale of 1 to 10 I would have to give the bike a big, fat, bloody 10! I should mention that it had nothing to do with the bike I used either. The bike was awesome! Thanks Shay! It was just me that was not so awesome.

Any who, then came the run. It's worth mentioning that when I got back from the bike ride 95% of the participants were already done with the run and either loading up to go home or sitting around enjoying their post race sandwiches. And I was about 95% sure I was going to skip the run, until I saw my cheering section. My parents were there and my brother Trent and his wife and kids, but the ones that got me were my boys. They were standing by the fence at the transition area cheering "Good job mom! You can do it mom!" and little McKay saying "You're da best mom evor!" So of course I had to finish. It was hot by then, and it was a pretty rugged trail run but I walked a lot of it and over all I would give it a 5.5.

I finished of the race by having an emotional break down. Tears of pain? Tears of joy that it was over? Tears of embarrassment that I was almost the last person across the finish line? All of it!

I figure that if you average the rankings from each event, taking into consideration that the bike portion took twice as long as the other two so I counted it double, the total experience would receive a 10.83! For reals ya'll, it sucked!

In the end it was a great bonding experience with my brother, Carson, who made me do it and whom I have since forgiven. It's one more thing I can check of my list. And regardless of my super embarrassing time, which I am not going to share, I am proud of myself for finishing it.

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I decided to post my official stats, so here they are:

bib number: 217
overall place: 200 out of 202
division place: 29 out of 29
gender place: 103 out of 105
time: 2:38:40
swim (500 m): 19:39
t1: 3:51
bike (16 miles): 1:29:00
t2: 2:56
run (3 miles): 43:14