Niki's Neverending Adventure

Hello everyone! Hope y’all have had a good weekend! I sure have!! The most exciting thing I did this weekend was race the TRI Oxford triathlon!! It was a great race!!

My mom went down to Oxford with me on Friday and we had a fun girl’s night that consisted of eating dinner at Old Venice on the Oxford Square and coming back to our hotel room and eating Hampton Inn cookies while watching TV in bed! Have y’all ever had the Hampton Inn cookies?? OMG, so good! I will stay at the Hampton Inn from now on just for those cookies! Haha :) We turned in early since we had a 5am wake up call to head to the race!!

I woke up easily to my alarm and tried to eat a bagel and PB, but only made it through half. I was too nervous and it was definitely too early to eat!! We got to the transition area pretty early and I was able to get an end spot for my bike. Makes it a lot easier to find it during the transitions if its on the end! So I was happy about that. We had about 45 minutes until race time, so I went and got my chip and got marked with my number, and then we just hung out and talked about all the awesome bikes there!! Makes me want a brand new bike! They are so pretty! I’ll have to post a picture of my bike, Buck, soon!

The swim portion was in a pool, which I was a little nervous about. The course was set up in a “serpentine” manner, where we swim up one lane, go under the rope, swim down the next lane, go under the rope, swim back up the next lane, and so on for 300 meters. Let me just say this… it was CHAOS!! I will take an open water swim any day over this pool swim! People were everywhere!! The bad thing was that the 30ish male age group started one person behind me so they ended up swimming over us from the beginning, not fun!! But, it was nice to be in a pool where I could see the bottom! I did like that aspect. I don’t have my official breakdown times, only my official total time so I really don’t know how long it took me to do this! Not very long because I was swimming (fighting) as fast as I could to get out of there! Haha :)

Here I am jumping into the pool. They wouldn’t let us dive because it was too shallow. See those tall guys behind me waiting to go? Yea, they were the ones whole swam right over top of me and the girl behind me in the very first lane! Guess they wanted us out of their way, ha!

That’s me swimming in the yellow swim cap in the very far lane. At this point I was still swimming all alone… too bad it didn’t last!

There I am swimming again (yellow swim cap), in the middle lane.

Finally done and running out of the water!! I was so ready to get on my bike!!

Not sure of my transition time, I can’t find the breakdown of times anywhere on the internet. I wasn’t superfast, but I wasn’t slow either. I was pretty nervous about this ride because my mom and I drove it the day before and it was literally ALL HILLS!!

It was a tough 13 miles but I survived and actually got up to 30mph on one of the downhill's!! I am getting a lot better at using my gears so that made the hills a tiny bit better. My legs were definitely spent by the end of this ride!

Almost to the transition area!!

Yes, they made us ride up this steep hill to get up to the transition area! Haha. My bike time according to my Garmin was 52:xx. Faster than I thought I would go on all those hills! I was definitely happy with that!

Again, no transition time but this one was even quicker. All I had to do was thrown on my shirt, hat, and grab my Garmin off my bike, and then I was off for a 5k!

My mom told me she knew I was still feeling ok at this point because I was smiling and waving at the camera! Haha. I did feel ok, better than my last Tri. And I am totally attributing that to me drinking a half Gatorade/half water mix on the bike instead of just water. Definitely makes a difference!!

The run portion was tough too! There were so many hills, and some that were super steep too! I definitely had to walk some but was happy with my time! I chit chatted with this older man for a bit, so that was nice!! Other than it being super hot and hilly, I don’t remember very much! It seemed to go by really fast!! I was happy they had water stops at mile 1 and 2! Seriously y’all, it was so hot! It was only like 9am but I swear it was 90+ degrees! I felt pretty good the entire time and ended my run with a smile on my face!

My run time from my Garmin was 33:xx, so definitely not my fastest 5k, but given the circumstances (swimming and biking prior, and the heat) I felt good about that!! I was definitely happy to be finished!!

I finished my 2nd Tri! Yay!! My official time was 1:38:18… which ended up giving me FIRST PLACE IN MY AGE GROUP!! Holy cow! I definitely never expected to win anything on my 2nd Tri!!

This is me and the girl who won 2nd place in our age group!! They gave out cash prizes, which was nice!!

And here’s the nice certificate I got!!

I am so loving Triathlon’s!! I can’t wait to do more! I am definitely addicted and am so pumped about it! And a big thanks for my mom for being my crowd support and paparazzi this weekend!!

If anyone knows of any awesome Triathlete blogs or magazines, please let me know!!

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In other news…. my running shoes died this weekend, so I had to get another pair!! I was so happy with my Nike Vomero’s last time, that I knew I wanted them again!

Look how new and pretty and white they are! Won’t stay that way long! Haha.

I got some new orthotics put in that hopefully will help with my plantar fascitis. Can’t wait to run in them tomorrow night at my Women Run Memphis group!

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And last but not least… I made some awesome Mocha Brownie Cups yesterday that I got from Lizzy’s blog! Yum, yum, yum! Go there and get the recipe! These are fabulous!!

Have a great night!

Posted in: on Sunday, August 15, 2010 at at 5:56 PM