moving to the big leagues

I earned my first race monies this past weekend!!  Because most of the races we compete in are small, there is no money involved.  Sweet shirts, check, nice prizes, check, money, not so much.  But this past weekend during the 5K Butterfly Fund Run, there was money involved.  Not for 1st place, 2nd or third, rather for 100th place.  100th place got $100.  I didn’t even think twice about it because not only did I not know how many people were running, the likelihood of placing 100th was pretty slim.

 

WELL… you guessed it!!  I got an email with my time, place, age group placement, etc and it said I placed 100th out of the 555 runners.  Good thing I passed that lady in purple right at the end!  The “C” drills and leg turn over drills were worth it. 

 

More excitingly, I beat my goal time by nearly 2 minutes and finished in 25.42 (3rd in my age group!).  The rest of the family did great! Mike placed 7th in his age group with a time of 23:11 (smoking hot I might add!), the girls finished in around 31 minutes in style and Dad and Kim enjoyed their nice stroll.

We ran for kids cancer research and for Ethan.  You can read Ethan’s story here.

It’s crazy to think that last year July, Hubs and I completed our first Triathlon (a mini sprint: 200yd swim, 8 mi bike, 4k run).  I thought it was tough but doable.  I was nervous but finished strong (even managed 3rd place in my age group). 

Fast forward one year.  Hubs and I begin training with a group (Fleet Feet) for the 2011 triathlon season.  We completed the same tri as last year as if it was a regular weekend workout (I moved up age groups and still placed 2nd in my age group beating my time by close to 4 minutes). 

And here we are today, 4 days away from an Olympic distance triathlon (1mi swim, 25mi bike, 10k run) and I’m ready … mostly because I have no choice.  I’m nervous about the distance even though I’ve trained for it.  I’m excited to see just what my body can do.  I’ve set a reasonable time goal for completion and am getting geared up.  Wow as I sit and type this, I can already feel my body getting nervous.  My motto for this race has become: I’ve trained for this and I’m ready.  Just one foot in front of the other. Just keep moving.  …. ok ok I know that’s a lot of “mottos” but sometimes different parts of the race call for different pick-me-ups.

I never imagined I would be doing an OLY tri this season.  When we started training this spring, we were just planning on doing more full sprint distances races and then next year doing the OLY distance.  But as the season progressed and with the wisdom, training and guidance of our coach… we knew we could do it!  and naïvely signed up =) AND good thing we signed up BEFORE we saw the race course… the last mile on the run is a doosie!

By the way, our coach is headed off to compete on Sunday in Ironman Canada (2.4mi swim, 112 mi bike, 26.2mi run).  Pretty crazy!

So anyways, if you happen to think about us Saturday morning starting around 5:00 am for the early risers and 8:00 am for the non-early risers you can be cheering and praying for us!  (race starts at 8, but with getting up, travel time, setting up and warming up, the jitters will start early)  We’re looking forward to a wonderful race and probably will have a story or two to share when its all said and done.

You can check out the race here.