Vikingman

A couple of months ago, Marc & I scored some free entries to the Vikingman Triathlon in Burley, ID. We signed up, and were pretty excited because the timing worked out well for it to be the Olympic distance triathlon that I was hoping to do at the end of the summer, and it was a chance for both of us to do the race together, which we haven't done before.

In the meantime, Marc started a new job, my training got kind of switched around (swimming started up, and bike riding ended) and it was hard to train every day like we were doing before the Emmett race. Neither one of us felt totally prepared for this race, but we were going to do it anyway.

We were able to "redeem" some child care credit, so to speak. My brother and sister-in-law owed us a night after we watched their kids overnight last year so we were finally "cashing" in, lol. As we were getting ready to leave, we checked the weather forecast for Burley the next morning, and it was predicting temperatures would be in the 40's in the morning. We had just earned some cash, and were hoping to hang onto it a little longer, but had to make some necessary cold weather racing gear (I picked up some arm sleeves, a skull cap, and some gloves). We finally got to Burley, picked up our race packets (I was glad I had double checked our entries the night before, because they didn't have record of us, but we had the e-mails to prove that they should have). We went to Walmart to pick up breakfast for the next day, and then drove around the start of the race looking for a place to park the car for the night.

I joked that we were sleeping in our van down by the river but that's exactly what we did. We took all the backseats out of the van, loaded up our beanbag/mattress, sleeping bags and pillows and made ourselves comfy. We enjoyed watching a movie on the little portable DVD player, tried to settle in for the night and tossed and turned all night. 5:00 came way too soon when the first alarm started going off. We had frost on the windows, we were tired, not feeling prepared for the race, and both of us were not motivated whatsoever to race. I truly believe if we hadn't had somebody watching our kids and had driven the two hours to get there, we probably would have turned off the alarm and went back to sleep. But somehow, we got ourselves moving, tried to choke down a little bit of breakfast and prepared to brave the cold as we set out to get our transition areas ready and head out to the swim start which was starting at 7:00.

It was still dark when we got up to the swim start. The temperature was 42 degrees and we were all freezing our behinds off. The sun started to show itself right as the men were getting in the water. The water in the snake river was actually WARMER than the air. It was misting while we were swimming, kind of cool, kind of freaky! Marc got started, and then they brought the ladies into the water. It was still cold, but not horrid. Can I just say how much I love having a wetsuit? It's glorious! I actually started the race as one of the girls in front, there was just a handful of us, so that's not saying too much. They counted down, and then we were off. I was able to really settled into a nice easy pace with this race. You still had to watch out for people, but it was nowhere near the swimming frenzy of the Emmett Sprint. I started out in the middle of the river, and edged closer to the shore as we went along. There was a girl on my right who I was able to pace with and keep in my line of site so I didn't have to stop and look around as much to see where I was going. The swim was just shy of a mile, and I was able to freestyle swim all of it. I've never swum that far in open water so it felt great! Even though it was in the river, I don't think there was enough of a current to really make a huge difference in the speed or ease. We swum to a dock, and there were a couple of people ready to help pull you up and onto the dock. It was a considerable distance to the transition area and I waited until the last possible minute to start peeling off my wetsuit.

Marc was waiting for me in the transition area. He decided to do a portion of the race with me, and I wasn't complaining! I took a lot longer in transition than I would have normally because 1) I tried harder to dry myself off as much as possible before putting on my layers 2) I was shivering so badly I couldn't put on the layers. It was so cold!! There is nothing like being soaking wet and trying to ride your bike when its cold outside. I was miserable, and I started panicking a little bit because my muscles were locking up and it was so hard to peddle. Marc patiently waited for me and stayed back with me while I was riding super slow. I finally started to thaw out a little bit and got a little faster as we rode. It helped that the sun was finally out and warming things up. We did two 14.75 mile loops in the middle of farm country. Towards the end of the first loop, we were both dieing because we both had to go to the bathroom, and every bump in the road made it hurt that much more! So we both had to stop for a potty break, and Marc decided he wanted to see how fast he could do the next loop, so I rode the second one by myself. To this date, I've never rode more than 25 miles and I was hurting! Those last few miles were tough. My legs were spent, I was uncomfortable in the seat, and just wanted OFF the bike! I finally made it to transition area and could hardly move my legs when I got off.

I got rid of some of my layers, switched shoes, and tried to head out. I shook out my legs, and my knee got the worst pain shooting through it. I limped through the transition area and was pretty worried I wouldn't be able to run on it, but once I got going, the pain kind of went away. I have never competed in a 10K (6.2 miles). I have run that far maybe 5 times at the most in the last 6 months, but never with a swim or bike beforehand. First mile felt pretty good, second mile felt pretty hard, doable, but hard, and the third mile stunk. We spent a lot of the race on a gravely path around the little airport there in Burley. The 4th and 5th mile became a lot of, let's run for a few minutes, walk for 20 seconds and try to run some more. I passed the 6 mile mark and kind of did a double take, because I knew it was much further than .2 miles to the finish line. After I had gone about .5 mile, I saw Marc coming back for me. I was hurting pretty bad and he helped jog/walk me in to the finish line. I passed mile marker 7 just before I turned into the shoot at the finish line (10k, my arse!)

And so we did it! We both finished the race that neither of us really wanted to start, but it felt so amazing accomplishing something that I worked so hard for and that pushed me farther than I've ever pushed myself. Next up, the Dirty Dash! Can't wait! (just hope my legs are up to it by next Sat)