It was only this past July when my wonderful friends who will remain nameless but knows who they are, got me on this kick of doing a triathlon. So, I entered and finished my first tri last September. It was called a sprint tri where you swim 400 yds, bike 11 miles and run 3.1miles. As Harold mentioned earlier, I'm not water friendly. I'm the one who will literally scream if you splash me in the pool and will only be in the pool or a body of water if I can stand. So, in order to complete this event I had some serious training to do. I took swim lessons and joined a masters swim program. You can all do the math, this was all in a 2 month time period. By the time I was faced to do the open water swim portion (which was in a lake in Pleasanton), I freaked out and did the entire swim in backstroke since I could not put my face in the water. My description to anyone who asks is "it looked like a scene from the Titanic where everyone is just swimming to survive." It took everything in me to calm myself down and talk myself through until I could finally get to a point in the lake where I could stand. As much as I was thankful for not drowning that day, I wasn't very thrilled of my performance.
Ever since Harold joined TNT a year ago, I look at every season's brochure to see where the events are being held. I kept saying if I ever do an Olympic tri I want it to be in Hawaii. So, here I am... I joined a wonderful group of people who will be doing the same thing I am. We will swim .93 miles (4 times what I did my last tri), bike 24.8 miles and run 6.2 miles. Some have done it before but there are others even in worse situations than myself, no swim, bike or run training. Yes, TNT will train you to do all those things!! What inspired me even more to do this event was at the Info meeting, a woman named Vanessa spoke to us about her experience with cancer. She was diagnosed with cancer right as she was graduating from college and if it weren't for the clinical trial drugs at the time she wouldn't be standing telling her story. That was in the early 90's. Some of the drug protocols she received are actually now part of the chemotherapy drugs today. But because of those drugs, she continues to have medical issues related to those drugs. She is also a participant in the Lavaman event so now my teammate.
Vanessa is just one of the many people we have met or heard their story about how the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has helped them.
Our first official training was last Saturday, Nov 6th. After the busy morning, getting our babysitter all situated... (Shout out to Kristine btw who without her I probably wouldn't be doing this!! Thank you!) I finally made it to the Sports Basement in Sunnyvale. After doing a quick, get to know your fellow team members, we split up into our mentor groups and rotated around to 4 stations; bike fitting, 1 mile run, tire changing and core work. Here we are headed out to do our 1 mile run (that's me in the front)...Afterwards, there was a gear clinic where they talked about all the required items needed for this event and all the luxury items. Being on the tri team can get quite expensive if you don't already have gear. Day 2:
 |
| Marci Hanisch's mentor group |
The night ended with HWTG (Hang With the Gang) at the Boardwalk in Los Altos for some well deserved dinner. Once again, more social time with the teammates. This is all fine and dandy now as I'm sure the training will start to get more intense... Missing next practice due to our 65 mile ride in Solvang this weekend. But the next practice I'll be attending next Monday will be swim! Yikes!
Until next time.... Aloha!
Laarni
No comments:
Post a Comment