St. George Tri

Warning: this is a long post. As a summary, racing is fun. If that is enough for you then I just saved you a good minute and a half. If not, read on.

Last weekend was the first race of the year. May triathlons are tough. Anyway, we went down to St. George with Natalie's Mom and the girls Friday afternoon. We wanted to do a test swim in the reservoir that day so we tried to get there as quickly as possible and luckily the girls were OK with that. I think having Grandma in between them on the whole trip down didn't hurt.

We got to the reservoir, got all suited up and realized that we were actually going to go swimming in the Arctic Ocean. The water hit your face like a brick. After some initial panic attacks and a hard-way lesson in spotting we got out and got warm, not necessarily feeling better about the swim the next day but glad to be out of the water.

On race morning the wind picked up. I started in the first wave and didn't feel the temperature of the water (which was cold) because I was watching the waves that I was about to swim against and the far buoy which looked to be positioned somewhere around Timbuktu. As I turned the second buoy, which I was only able to spot by almost running into it, I thought about the fact that this was going to be Sean's first race experience. I felt bad. The I got a face full of water and continued to worry about myself. (I am a selfish jerk) As it turns out the sprint didn't even get to swim because of conditions so that was a good five second of worry totally wasted.

Everybody got to bike through the wind and through the Sahara. There are some sand dunes on the south side of the reservoir on either side of the road, that is unless the wind is bad, then the dunes don't worry so much about staying on the sides of the road. Road slicks and sand dunes are an interesting combination.

The run was good with a big sand hill in the middle that woke the legs up nicely. In all it was a tough but good course. Now Natalie has her first race after having Lizzie, I have my first Olympic, Sean got to race his first race without fighting that wonderful swim, and Laurie got hosed out of her best event in the race. OK, so maybe not ideal for all but a fun trip anyway.

Pictures to come.