I can mark this off my bucket list!

Last weekend I finished my first sprint triathlon! My great friend Mia was training for a half Ironman and my boyfriend is a marathon runner, so I got it in my head that I could do something like that too. I asked them both to do it with me and they agreed! I knew it would be much easier if I knew I had friends by my side (Mia actually did the race with me, while my boyfriend went ahead of us, and waiting at the finish line for me).

I started training in my own sort of way, nothing scheduled, no actual training plan was set. This was my first mistake. I should have trained more, but since I didn’t care so much about my time or placement it wasn’t that big of a deal.

The most difficult thing about the race was the swim. I tried to swim at least once a week for training, but never had a chance to do an open outdoor swim. The water was so choppy. There weren’t that many people in my age group, and I stayed toward the back. So I didn’t run into people like I was scared of doing. But it was more challenging that I ever thought it would be. My time for the swim was 20:35, which was about the same as my training time. I’m quite happy with my swim time since I was choking water and having to look up a lot to make sure I was going toward the buoy and not running over people the whole time.

I only rode a bike 7 times outside before race day. Thankfully, my friend let me borrow her road bike that she never uses and it fit me well. I supplemented outdoor riding with indoor spinning classes at least once a week. I’ve been spinning almost 2 years. That practice was very helpful for race day because this race was almost all hills! It was hard. My time for the bike was 48:51, which was a little bit more than my training rides.

I hate running, and was not looking forward to that last leg of the race. I ran maybe once or twice a week for training, but never got up to doing 3 miles straight through. And I had no idea how my legs were going to work after swimming and biking. But with Mia by my side, I was able to push through it. Again lots of hills, so we walked up those and jogged the rest of the way. My time for the run was 40:04, which could have been way better.

After the race we enjoyed a celebratory Zico Chocolate drink and went to Spiral Diner to chow on some food. I’m really happy that I did this, and want to do more in the future (with a better training plan). The moral of the story is, you can do a sprint triathlon too with very little training, along as you are in pretty good shape. I’m so glad I can mark this off my bucket list!

What are some things on your bucket list? What have you recently marked off the list and how did you feel?