My first triathlon season comes to an end or how I spent my summer vacation

My first triathlon season has come to an end and I've had so much fun that it never felt like training - it was like being on vacation.  Below are a few of the highlights of my summer - in no particular order.

Jerome was my partner in crime for the majority of the summer with Beth joining in on some of our rides and swims.

False starts - this is when I'm on my bike and stopped at a stop sign or a red light and it takes more than one attempt to get started again due to nerves and cars. On one particular false start poor Jerome got stuck on the wrong side of Rte 2 because it took me until the light turned yellow to get myself going again.

Bricks (when you run after riding)  - My first "brick" - I found out really quick why its called a brick.  I think I only had to run for 10 mins - the entire time I was thinking how I'd made a big mistake about this 'tri' thing, that I couldn't possibly run 3 miles.

One of our first long - rides the "Sweet Virgina " loop - description: flat with  gently rolling hills. Well, in my humble opinion that was a bit of a fib.  There was nothing rolling about the hills and it was one of my first long rides. At mile 13  I ended up falling over going up one of the hills - I panicked a bit, dropped my chain, fell over - still clipped in.  Banged up and bloody I finished the ride, it rained a little, washing off some of the blood.  We got lost and ended up going about 35 miles.  I had to do a short brick after the ride and my ankle didn't feel gret but then this was only my second brick and nothing felt great so I didn't think anything of it until we were back at the car and I took my sneakers and socks off. That's when I realized the golf-ball sized swelling on my ankle wasn't a good thing - I'd sprained the damn thing.

Wet Suits -  it takes a village to get the damn thing on the first (second or third) time.  The first time I wore it at Walden Pond I was swimming with Jerome we were swimming to the first point, only problem was every time I looked up to spot I was facing the house.  Apparently, its really important to make sure that you have the wet suit all the way up on BOTH sides or you swim in circles.  When I uploaded my information on Garmin I you could clearly see that I had swum in a circle several times before I just decided to doggy paddle to the point and fix myself.  It was pretty comical after I got done being frustrated.

First swim across Walden Pond - The first time I swam to other side of Walden, I stood up and looked across to the bathhouse and welled up with tears - I was so overwhelmed at what I had accomplished.

For my Olympic I wore an earplug for my swim - I didn't realize that I had left it in for the entire race until I was done and sitting with Tyler of Race-Pak in his tent and reached up to get a piece of "hair" out of my ear.

And of course - crossing the finish line - NOW I'm a triathlete!  An amazing, adrenaline-filled, unexplainable feeling!