Good morning!
Sorry about leaving you hanging yesterday. I was moving at such a slow pace after the race…you don’t want to know how long it took me to write Part 1. Eric goes, ‘You are STILL typing?!’ You should have seen the look on his face when I told him I only got through the swim portion! Priceless.
Thank you for all of your encouraging comments…Eric was basically glowing all day long!
Try-A-Tri Race Recap: Part 2
Missed Part 1 of our Try-a-tri recap? See this post.
After the swim, we exited the water through here…

We were quite disoriented when we got out of the water! Eric said he was wobbling all over the place like he was drunk!
Next we, headed to the transition area for T1!

We were SLOW as molasses transitioning. We didn’t want to kill ourselves trying to rush, rush, rush so we just took our time and did what we could. Plus, we were super tired from the swim!
I decided on Saturday that I would not be bringing Dwight to the race. Initially, I was planning on using my Garmin 305 for the bike + run portion, but I decided against it. I wasn’t doing the try-a-tri for time and I didn’t have any goal in mind, so I figured bringing a Garmin along would be pretty futile. I wanted to go out there with my husband and have a good time. Dwight stayed at home.
Eric is 9 months older than me, so every year we are the same age for 3 months! He turns 28 in August.
Our T1 was probably a good 4 minutes or so. Off we went on the bike for the 10km. We saw some friends in the crowd cheering us on and it really boosted our spirits!!

[That isn’t us in the picture, but you can pretend we had spiffy road bikes!]
While I was a bit worried about the bike leg, it actually turned out to be our strongest leg of the race! For some reason, I thought it was going to be much more congested than it was, but there was actually a lot of room on the course.
Also, thank you to those of you who told me some of the biking rules. I had no idea that everything would be single file unless passing (this was GREAT!) and I used the ‘On Your Left’ each time I passed someone. Very useful info. I do believe the race announcer went over these exact rules on the loud speaker, but it was very hard to hear him from the transition area and in the water!
Eric and I had a really strong bike ride. The 10k course was challenging with lots of small hills, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle. Our spirits were high on this bike ride. Throughout the entire 10k ride, we alternated taking the lead position between the two of us. Eric would get a burst of energy and blow by me on the left, and then I would get a burst of energy and pass him. It was almost like a little game and made the bike leg very enjoyable! We were also happy because the rain had stopped during our swim, so the roads weren’t slick and wet.
The only downside to the bike leg was not having a road bike. It is much more difficult + slower biking on the road with a mountain bike and we could have been a lot faster with a road bike, but we obviously weren’t going to buy a road bike just for a try-a-tri race. We were actually expecting to see a lot more mountain bikes on the course, but so many people had road bikes (and many of them were VERY high end bikes worth 4k and up!). We drooled over them.
We biked hard and gave it our all. We talked here and there and we kept saying things like, ‘This is so much better than swimming!’

[Not me]
Our time for the bike leg was officially 32:58/32:59 minutes which is 18.2 km/hr. I was so surprised to find that my legs felt like BRICKS when I stepped off my bike. I guess I have never really pushed that hard on a bike before and my quads were stiff, stiff, stiff.
T2 is a very quick transition because all we had to do was take off our helmets and grab a sip of water.
The run leg was just 2.5 km, so I figured it would go very smoothly!
The first 1.5 km were run on the trails, up this hill and beyond:

Eric and I were in high sprits and we sang the Rocky theme song while going up the hill and laughing. I kid you not.
It was VERY muddy due to all of the rain and we had to walk through many areas so we didn’t wipe-out. Eric also stopped to go to the washroom and I waited for him to return. We were off again through the muddy trails, taking it very slow.
Around 1.5 km, Eric started to have serious doubts.
He kept getting bad stomach cramps and I encouraged him to walk and stretch them out. He said he wasn’t sure if he could finish and he was getting frustrated that people were passing us. I gave him several pep talks during the run and I told him that there is nothing wrong with walking! I kept encouraging him to stop and take a breather, but he was still having a very hard time getting over his mental doubts about his ability.
I tried to use every trick in the book. I got him to visualize how great crossing the finish line would feel, a big post-race lunch, a hot shower, etc. I also said, ‘Don’t forget we are on a secret mission here, we can’t give up now! We are so close!’ After about 10 minutes of the pep talk, we made it to the last hill and we could see the finish line approaching…

[This picture was taken at the end of the race, but there were people all around the finish line cheering!]
Eric said, ‘Ok let’s do it.’ and he got a burst of motivation to finish. I said, ‘Want to sprint?’ and he said yes and then he grabbed my hand for the last 10 metres and we sprinted our little hearts out.
It was a moment.
Unfortunately, we sprinted so fast at the end, we had to slow down suddenly right at the finish line or we would have trampled two people who were also crossing. :lol: It wasn’t exactly the photo finish we hoped it would be. However, we are still waiting on pictures so it could be quite funny.
Our finishing time for the 2.5km run was 17:07 mins which is 6:51 km/hr.
I was disappointed to find out that we didn’t get finishers medals for this race! I really wanted Eric to have a symbol for all of his hard work. I think every race should have medals!
Right after crossing the finish line, we saw Steph who was eagerly awaiting her Sprint Relay! She was doing the 30km bike leg for the relay. Her and her team did awesome, check out her recap on her blog!

Eric and I were so happy to be finished, we decided to drop all our stuff off at the car and then head back to the ‘party area’ to get some post-race food. We must have walked another 30 minutes to the car and back! It felt like it took forever.

I had an apple and a banana and Eric had a Classic Glo Bar and an apple.
Then we headed back to the water to see if we could see the Sprint going on, but we missed the action so we headed home to get out of our damp clothes and get warm again! My black jacket was soaked and this blue zip-up was very damp and I was freezing. I was also wearing my wet swimsuit and red biking tank underneath! Brrrrrr. I kept saying, ‘Hot shower, hot shower, hot shower’
One last photo memory before leaving.

Speaking of brrrr…I present to you the doggie wetsuit.
My heart went out to this dog….he did NOT look like a happy spectator!!!
Later in the day, we found out our results and we both had a finishing time EXACTLY the same which was 1:02:58. I was quite surprised that it was just over 1 hour because it felt like a lot longer than that! I finished 31/37 in my age category and Eric finished 19/21 in his category. I think Eric thought he was going to be dead last, so to see that he wasn’t made him quite excited. :biggrin: Overall, we finished 234th (Eric) and 235th (me) out of 276 try-a-tri participants!
We honestly could not have cared less about our time in the end, it was the experience that mattered to us. We both knew that we had taken ourselves far, far out of our comfort zone to do this race and that felt really good.
Later today, I will be showing you everything I ate post-race. Have a great day!
The fact that you even signed up for the race and showed up on race day should be commended!! Congrats to both of you!!
Loved recap 1 + 2. Absolutely perfect! :) I can imagine how exciting it was to finish holding hands together. Cutest thing ever. Congrats!!
Congratulations! Even signing up for a Tri would be a huge (scary) step for me. I admire you both for stepping out of your comfort zone!
Aww, I love how in love you guys are with each other. I could totally imagine you two crossing the finishing line holding hands and encouraging each other… How sweet ;) You guys are so strong. Honestly, getting through this race at all is amazing. :D
Looking forward to the EATS! :D
Wei-Wei
Wow, the whole experience sounds just as mentally challenging as it is physically. I’m so impressed that you both stuck it through and successfully completed your first triathlon! Congrats to you and Eric, and thank you for sharing your experience! I really admire you both for taking this on – attempting a triathlon is something I’d like to do someday, and reading your account makes me all the more motivated to push to do it someday. :)
-Alison
I’m so glad the rest of the race went better than the swim and you two seemed to have such a great time together! Congrats on finishing!!!
LOVE the race re-caps. I’m going to do one tonight when I get my photos off my camera. Hope you don’t mind a photo of you up on my blog, that I caught of you!
You met MARTY!(The dog wearing the Gatorade rain jacket). She’s the friendliest little pup around, and I have no idea why she always has her tail stuck between her legs – because she always jumps up in your lap and wants to be petted. What a little trooper.
You were amazing at the race!!! Loved seeing you.
PS- how do you know MARTY?!?
Marty’s owner – the woman… not sure of her name. But I see her at all of the races. Her son is really awesome at Tri’s. I only actually introduced myself to her yesterday after attending races with my boyfriend for YEARS (I’m a bit shy).
Do you know Marty & her owners too? :)
Wow that is amazing you have been going to races for so long! :) You rock, clearly.
No I don’t know the owners…hopefully we didn’t tick them off by taking a pic of their cutie dog. I told her their dog was possibly the cutest dog I have ever seen. :)
y’all are seriously too adorable…i LOVE that you sprinted and then had to come to a screeching halt before the finish line! promise you’ll post that photo? :)
Yes, photo please! I’m itchin’ to see it :)
You bet!
I love that you two did this together. So romantic!
Congrats on finishing your first tri! Will you be doing another? :)
Thank you :)
I will be doing a post in the near future on my thoughts on the matter!
LOL I saw that dog a few times too. I felt awful for him; his tail was so far between his legs that it was pretty much touching his nose!
Eric, there’s no shame in walking! I walked a fair bit on both my try-a-tri and sprint last year. After pushing yourself in the water and on the bike there’s no way you’ll be running at your normal ability.
Wow! I really enjoyed reading your recaps. Way to go! You two are so inspiring!
Great recaps! I am so anxious to get out and do mine now, you really have got me quiet excited, but I still have so long to wait (well 11weeks).
That dog is so sweet! It’s nice that his owner was thoughtful enough to help to try and keep him warm, though you’re right he doesn’t look too thrilled to be out in the cold and rain.
I too was told that there likely wouldn’t be too many road bikes at the race, and that lots of people use their mountain bikes. Hmm..Oh well I’m still not buying a road bike for my Try-A-Tri.
Where can I find the bike rules you talked about?
Definetly felt your cold damp feeling Sunday morning. I was out running an 8k race, even after my hot shower I was still cold all day long.
Congrats again! Awesome job, and it must have been nice that it ended up that you and Eric got to complete the race together.
Congrats Angela and Eric! You are triathletes now.
Now that you had a day to relax and think about the whole experience, would you do it again? Your recap of the race was so interesting; I almost want to sign up for another try-a-tri myself…almost, but not quite. Perhaps I’ll do a duathlon instead.
No finishers medals!?
I got one for my marathon yesterday and I haven’t taken it off since :)
Wow you both did so well. I can’t believe how cold you must have been afterwards – a hot shower must have felt like heaven. A massive congrats for doing this, you must be so proud of yourselves. So the big question, are you going to do another??!
I’ve been traveling (still am), and am just now catching up your your TRI (HA!) umphant success!!! Congrats to you and Eric– I am so impressed with both of you!!! Y’all obviously really have each others’ backs…way to go, girl!!
I was telling Himself about your Try a Tri last night. He hates running though and I can’t run because of my back and knees. We’re both strong bikers and swimmers though. So he said “maybe we could do a biathlon”. I don’t know why but it made me laugh and laugh and laugh. It was the serious way he said it :D
Yay for you and Eric though !!
I loved reading this story.
I love how you and Eric motivate each other. It sounds like you make a great team!
Hahahah a doggie wetsuit?! If that for real? Too cute. :)
You guys are super inspiring!
Great recap, and great job! I love racing with my boyfriend, even though we hardly ever stick together (he’s much faster than me). But sharing the experience is so much fun!