"I get knocked down, but I get up again"

I did it! The goal was to finish with a smile, and I did. And it was so fun!

For those of you who don’t know, I competed in a sprint triathlon today (my first). It starts with a half-mile swim, continues with a 12 mile bike ride, and finishes off with a 3.1mile run.

It’s so satisfying to complete a goal. I’ve been training for about a year-and-a-half for this, and it’s such a rush to finally be done. The actual event only took less than 100 minutes (not a very significant amount of time), but I spent almost 10,000 minutes in training over the past year.

In a lot of ways today wasn’t even about the race. It was more about celebrating the training and everything I learned through it. Perseverance, consistency, balance (both physical and mental), and gradual progress (just to name a few). Training introduced me to new people, places, and activities. I’ve conquered a few fears, feel more comfortable in my own skin, and have achieved goals I didn’t really think were possible to achieve. I’ve also found out how many cheerleaders I have in my life! So many people have encouraged me along the way. What a blessing!

I can’t tell today’s story without mentioning my fall. Running to the transition area after the swim I slipped and totally bit it in front of many people. Not my proudest moment. But . . . I got back up and kept going with the race. Didn’t even cry or anything :-) Don’t know if I could have done that a year ago. Fortunately I wasn’t injured, just a minor skinned knee. Funny thing is I think it helped me relax for the rest of the race. I thought; “well, if I can keep going after making a fool out of myself, maybe I can really finish this thing.” I actually was kind of laughing about it through most of the bike portion. I went for it, fell down, got back up, and made it through. It made my story richer. Another lesson learned--I can fall and still not be a failure.

Hopefully some of these lessons will stick around and I can apply them to other areas of life. In any case, this was a great experience.

Now to ice my poor skinned knees. Who’s up for joining me next year?

PS: to clarify the title of this post, my fall was completely my own doing. Nobody knocked me down. The song it goes to seemed fitting though.