Success (?) at the IronGirl Triathlon: 3:39:36--now with pictures

At the start of the race. The water is pretty cold because it rained most of Saturday before the race...and really this summer has never been too hot. I was not a happy camper about this!

Swimming along (or is it taking pictures to avoid swimming along), during the race. You can see from this picture how murky the water was. You can barely see my arms which really are not attached by a Giraffe sized neck!

The entire swim I kept checking to make sure my limbes were attached because I would have no way of seeing if a shark came up below me and took a bite of me!

Here I am with a sign that I find personally very encouraging...I know that Tristan did not put it up, however, I will take my encouragement any way I can get it!

Here I am approaching the finish line. I am really close but alas not quite there. I would like to suggest that I loitered here for about 1-2 hours, but in reality this picture took perhaps 15 second tops. I guess I just really have to come to grips with the fact that I just really stink!!!

They have posted preliminary results of the IronGirl Triathlon, which I finished yesterday. My time was 3 hours 39 minutes and change. This is about 1 minute slower than last year and 30+ minutes slower than two years ago. So I am de-proving with age (or whatever the opposite of improving is).

This year my legs felt like lead when I woke up, I have been fighting chronic knee problems since about 2 weeks ago and I was pretty nervous about getting a massive cramp during the swim. And during the biking portion since I have way too many pieces of equipment on my bike (since it sometimes doubles as my "vehicle" to/from work, I was able to help a young lady, Patty whose chain had disengaged then got stuck in the gears). Alas regardless of my slow swim, slow bike and super slow run, I finished within the 4 :30 cutoff, which I am happy about.

I will write a more detailed report and include pictures later (including several from the swim).