The Polar Bear Triathlon happened last weekend and boy did it come with a fury!  We have had awesome warm weather ….and all of a sudden the morning of the triathlon, it decided to turn to winter!

As we were driving to the range, we were getting rained on as we went through the pass.  A little rain doesn’t do any harm, right?  And as we were prepping, they postponed it a half an hour because of the slick roads and I could tell it was going to be a windy one too!

The run started at 8am.  Everyone took off like a shot.  With my training, I felt like I would be ok on the run, but I soon realized I wasn’t as good as I thought I was.  Mike did pretty well and stuck with the front crowd, while I just kept a pace and made it in under 30 minutes (Thank goodness!).

We didn’t get a lot of pictures, but here is documentation of the ice that we came back to when we transitioned to the bike.

When I got to my bike, I had a sheet of ice on my seat.  I couldn’t put my bike shoes on with my gloves, so I took them off.  I hurried and transitioned and found out that my shifter was so frozen that I had to keep hitting it twice to shift up.  Then my brakes were acting shady.  As I rounded the corner, guess what I noticed was not on my hands?You guessed it. My gloves.  I decided just to keep going and told myself I have mountain biked in worse. I grew to regret it about a mile in.

Meanwhile, let’s talk about where Mike was…

Since he was in the front of the group, he shot out on the transition.  The cop that was directing traffic decided not to direct the bikers and they took off on a course that was not part of the real course. Long story short, Mike ended up going six miles more than he needed for the race (and still got first place in his category). A bunch of people got really jipped!

This is what it looked like when we went over the pass.

So now back to my story…

While I was riding, I was deciding whether to quit or not.  I kept picturing me getting to the pool and the paramedics having to treat my hands for frost bite.  Let’s just say a saint of a biker came by me named Jason McClure (a friend of ours), who found out I didn’t have gloves, and then waves his in the air and drops them in the middle of the road for me.

Lifesaver.

I had to finish now so I started hauling! I passed a lot of people at this point.  It kind of disappointed me that I never got to see my legit time considering the whole glove incident. I would love to have seen the showdown at the end because the top three people in my category (with me included) were all a minute apart.  I like to think that by stopping on the road and putting the gloves on might have cost me.  (It’s what every person does post race. …the shoulda, coulda, woulda.)

Mike was able to try to get back as much time as possible, while we went through some terrible head winds.  People were complaining and I heard a few girls crying out as I went by…no joke.  It was dang cold.

As soon as I got to the swim, I hopped in the pool and it felt awesome and warm!  I knew I was going to be crappy…and I was, but I didn’t stop.  I think I was around ten to eleven minutes. My goal was nine. Ha!

The other sucky thing was that we didn’t find out our results the day of the race because they weren’t able to record the bike times (which is a HUGE bummer because that is the only portion where I felt awesome and wanted to see how I did).  They did give out the Southwest Series Champion trophies for 2013 and Mike won!

We later found out Mike got first in his category and I got third.  I’ll take it! It was such a hard race, but I am so glad I did it.  Seven months ago I had a baby…so I’ll use that as an excuse. Hehe. Mike and I are always making fun of the excuses we make after a race.

It is what it is!