W/e race reports....

[dex]

This Seattle Danskin Girl finished. Slooooowly.

There were moments of hilarity. (No, really...at one point I started laughing so hard I forgot how to swim. No, I don't remember what I thought was so funny at the time. I had to actually watch someone swim by me to figure out how to get my body parts coordinated and working together again.) And some pretty intense pain--my knee blew up near the turnaround point of the ride.

I now have five blisters, a heat rash, and two chafe marks. (I started the day with two blisters and the heat rash after the logistical hassle that was Saturday.) And a finisher's medal. ()

It was fun, but I could have done without the pain and the subsequent slow down. I left my bike computer at home (because I'm kind of a dork like that) but I was flying through the first half of the bike and passing people constantly, but slowed waaaaay down coming into the turnaround when my knee decided it had simply had enough of that. Ah, well. It had been behaving almost a little too well the last couple of weeks, I should have suspected something like this. Heh.

After that, I just walked almost the entire run course. I played a little bit of the here-to-there game (e.g. I'll run from this driveway to that tree), because running made the blisters on my feet hurt less, but my knee hurt a little more during those bits, so it was just like choosing what kind of pain I felt like having at any given moment.

During the "run", I was dubbed Miss Pink by more than a few people (pink skirt, pink race belt, pink hair). And I got lots of variations on, "Wow, Miss Pink has ridiculous legs." I have to assume they were talking about my muscles and not the swollen knee...heh.

My actual transitions went really well (except for forgetting to put my sunglasses on before the bike), but my spot was really far away from all of the start/finish areas. Looking at the times, it seems like I really dawdled, but the reality is that I just had really long distances to cover to get to and from my spot.

Despite all of that, it was easily as much, or more, fun than I hoped it would be. I wanna do it again. (Maybe with a little less knee fussiness.)