What makes you strong makes you beautiful...

Sunday I finished my first ever triathlon. It has taken me a few days to put my thoughts together to write a post about the experience. What I have come to realize is that what I want to capture is not my times or my rank (a few minutes slower than I hoped, right in the middle of the pack) but a little about the training, the day and how I feel looking back.

This spring my sister in law Hilary encouraged (bullied?) me to sign up for the YWCA Women's Triathlon - a sprint distance tri at Baker Park in Minnesota. When I signed up I was training for Dam to Dam and the tri seemed ages away. "Sure I'll be able to train to swim 500 yards, bike 15 miles, then run a 5k in August." Click, click and I was signed up.

After Dam to Dam I started training in earnest, rising early, carving out time on the weekends with a goal of logging time in each sport twice a week, every week. The swim was the biggest challenge, but also where I made the most progress. I fretted, I read, I stuck with it, I started to think I could actually do this. Most of my training was alone, early in the morning, but I really enjoyed checking in with Hilary on her progress. I had support from John, my family, my friends, a neighbor...

A couple of weeks ago John and Ava caught the Aflac Irongirl Triathlon on television one Saturday, Tivo'ed it, and all of the sudden Ava was an expert on tri's ("you know momma, they are going to write your number on your arm AND your leg with a MARKER"). And I started to get nervous.

Race day came and the weather forecast was terrible. I obsessively checked weather.com for updates for the three days leading up to the race. Terrible. The morning of the race a fierce thunder and lightening storm swept through and I really thought they were going to cancel. But the collective anxiety of 500 participants and race organizers must have pushed the front through faster than anyone expected. The skies began to clear and at 8:00am we were on the beach, preparing for the swim. It was cold, windy, the sky was ominous, but we were actually going to race this thing....

I was thrilled to have my parents there, John, Ava and Amelia - here I am giving them a wave right before our age group wave moved into the water. I look very happy for a person who's about to enter a person-blender in the lake....

So the swim sucked, but I got through it, finding a nice groove the last 200 yards or so. Out of the water, up the hill, barefoot to the bike for transition 1. The bike went pretty well until about halfway through when I caught my shoelace on my pedal. It cost me a few minutes to get untangled and shook my confidence a bit, but I finished strong. Here I am moving through transition 2 - happy to be done with the bike....

The run was my favorite of the three. I felt the most confident and knew the finish line was attainable. At each transition I saw my parents, my husband, my children and the families of the other women out to support the NF team in their bright yellow shirts cheering me on. I was slightly self-conscious, but mostly so grateful, buoyed by their support and their encouragement.

As I rounded the corner on the final turn of the running leg that would take me to the finish line of the race I saw the cluster of yellow shirts and knew especially Ava was there waiting for me, waiting to run with me to the end. Words fail me as I try to capture how it felt to have Ava pop on to the trail, a wide excited smile, grab my hand, and run me in. It was one of the highlights of my life.

Throughout the race negative thoughts would creep into my head. A person in the age group swim wave after ours passed me on the last turn, "Am I really going that slow?" When my shoe lace wrapped around my pedal it became clear I wouldn't finish the bike in the time I had hoped and I felt very discouraged. But turning that corner, finishing the run, seeing my family and holding Ava's hand across the finish line I was thinking 'look what I have done." And I knew my husband, my children, my parents were proud of this accomplishment because they love me. As I saw the pride and happiness reflected on their faces, on my daughter's faces, I realized that the least I should give myself was a heart and mind open to accepting that love, that pride and the permission to bask in the accomplishment.

It was exhilarating. I will never forget it.