Barnes Lake Triathlon

This past Saturday Brolan & I participated in our first ever sprint triathlon. It was held at Barnes Lake which is just north of Lapeer. For this race we had to swim 300m, bike 13.4 miles and run 3.4 miles. A group of us from our church decided we would all train and participate in this race together.

For those of you that have known me for a while you know that I am NOT an athletic person. I think I made it through 1 year of basketball in 5th grade and that was about it! I even stayed in band through my senior year of high school just so that I wouldn't have to take a gym class. Even in college my PE classes consisted of bowling 1, bowling 2 and social dance. Ummm...no definitely not an athletic person. It wasn't until after Kaelyn was born that I decided I needed to start exercising on a regular basis. So I did start working out at a gym 3 times a week.

But still this exercise did not include swimming, biking or running. To commit to train for a sprint triathlon was a big challenge for me. My goal was just to finish the race...no matter how long it took. When I first got into the pool to train I could barely swim 50m before having to take a long break. Gradually, I worked my endurance up and at the end I could swim 1500m without stopping. I learned that I actually enjoyed swimming and that I will continue to swim long after this is over. The running, however, is a completely different story. I have decided that my body just isn't designed for running. I don't really call what I do running. It is more like a slow jog...a very slow jog. Even after all of the training I still couldn't jog the entire 3.4 miles. But I was satisfied with the progress that I had made.

The day of the race I was quite nervous. I felt like I was as ready as I ever would be but my nerves were getting the best of me. It was nice to have all of us MCCer's doing it together, to encourage us along. Here is a picture of our group from church.


Here are the ladies...


Here is a picture of Brolan & I showing off our race numbers...


Brolan went back and asked them to add an extra "0" to his race number.


The first part of the race was the 300m swim in Barnes Lake. This is us testing out the water temp. I must say it wasn't as cold as I thought it would be.

And we are off....


The swim went pretty well. The heart was pounding so I never could get a good rhythm going but I was able to beat Brolan out of the water...so I felt pretty good about that!

The bike portion was 13.4 miles and consisted of part dirt and part paved roads. The bike around the lake was the toughest portion. There were a lot of hills and turns. Once I got off the bike my legs felt like Jell-O! Trying to force them to run after biking was a challenge. I did have to walk about 1/2 of the course. My legs just wouldn't move that fast. But I kept going and persevered on toward the finish line. Thank goodness I had my ipod with me! It definitely motivated me to get going! Brolan finished before me with a time of 1 hr and 50 minutes!

I came in a little while later with a time of 1 hour 57 minutes.


When I saw the finish line I had tears in my eyes! I was so proud of myself for finishing in under 2 hours! I would have to say, for me personally, this was one of the toughest athletic challenges I have ever undertaken and I was happy that it was finished! I am even crazy enough to say that I am going to do it again next year!