I'm doing 22 things
My first triathlon was this morning, race started at 7:58…or was supposed to…
At 8:03 today they decided to cancel the swim because the storms can stirred up the river really badly and also made the current much stronger, it wasn’t safe. So they rearranged the course frantically and made it a duathlon, 1.5mi run, 15.5mi bike, 3.1mi run, I’m not thrilled at this point but still pretty ok, it was cloudy and cool and I’d made some friends. The race was also greatly delayed and my original start time of 9:12 was pushed back to 9:46.
My wave actually started around 10 and had a great run time, was really pumped going into the bike. It was cool and I was feeling good! Around mile 2 it poured briefly but no thunder, the roads were really slick so much slower than anticipated but doing well. After the first lap (it’s a 2 lap course) it was thundering a bit but sounded far off and they let me start the second lap. I was with a few girls from my transition area and around the 4th mile the sky opened and we actually thought we were in a tornado, thunder that was literally shaking the ground and lightening that was very scary. The rain HURT and it was blinding, within 30 seconds we’d been told to pull over. At this point we were on a bridge and were told to ‘duck and cover’ against the side wall (about 2 ft high) of the bridge with our bikes over our heads, bad news. After about 5-10 minutes we all got up and ran our bikes off the bridge and finished the bike course where we were congratulated and entered T to pack up.
All of transition was totally flooded, I had to dig through the water and muck around my area to find all my things, goggles hat etc had floated a bit but I think I got it all. I met up with my boy near the car and we rinsed off and headed home. So I’m safe and well and had a great time, just not the race I anticipated. There’s another one close by on Sept 13th though that I plan on signing up for tonight….after I go to the phone store =( although the phone and camera were in a plastic bag they didn’t full survive, hoping for a revival but not that optimistic =(
