Little Liz’s Training Blog

Last fall, I read Jessica’s visualization for her first Ironman triathlon. Granted, she was participating in an Ironman triathlon…. yeah, so that’s a lot more of an accomplishment than a sprint triathlon, but that shouldn’t negate this post. After she posted her visualization, she completed the event and came back and wrote a real review of it. Her visualization turned out to be a very romantic idea! But, I really enjoyed reading her visualization and then comparing it to her actual review of the event. So I am going to do the same thing.

My Visualization of my First Triathlon:

I wake up before the alarm because I’m too excited and anxious. My sister and I are up and dressed to impress and head out the door by about 7am. We hit up the continental breakfast at the hotel we are staying at for a bagel & cream cheese, a banana, some coffee and possibly some OJ. Then we start drinking water (and we don’t stop until, I don’t know when? I’ll ask Sarah when we should stop. She’s my resident tri expert!). We may or may not bike the 2 miles to the event. The other option would be to drive. If it is raining, we will drive. Once we arrive… well… this is all sort of a blur since I have never done a triathlon before. Maybe we will find Sarah and desperately say  “Sarah! What do we DO?!” Or perhaps my calm, cool and collected sister will say “Liz… follow the signs. Let’s pretend like we know what we are doing.” And we will figure it all out from there on out. (Are there even signs to follow?? Ohh jeeez.)

The Start.

I imagine my sister will start in front of me because her last name starts with an M and mine starts with an S. (But after April 12th mine will start with a C and that will never happen again! Unless of course she is actually faster than me.) If this is anything like swim starts in high school swim team, I will have a strong urge to pee my pants right up until it is my turn to get in the water. Then I will get in and they will say “go!” I will push off and I will pull hard. Probably too hard. But I can do it — I did it Monday, for a long time. I pulled strong and steady for 300 straight meters, I know I can do it in this pool, too. I’ll sprint the last 50 meters.

T1

After the swim I will get out, probably too exhausted. I’ll start to panic looking for my bike. I’ll find it and freak for a millisecond and say “Self, stop freaking. This is your first triathlon. You don’t actually CARE about your time. Just dry off. Put some warm clothes on. Eat something. DRINK WATER. Put your helmet on!! Don’t forget your helmet!! And your number! And just go. And relax.” And I’ll get on the bike and go.

The Bike

And I imagine that I will be trying to catch up to my sister at this point so we can be near each other, so I’ll push hard. Hopefully she will be waiting for me?I think even if we decide to wait on one another, we might get caught up in the excitement and say “uh, forget what we said! I’m GOING!” So… I will have to push hard to find her. Hopefully I will catch up to her. I imagine I will push hard for about 5 miles and then I will crash. I will say “Sister! I have to rest now! I am DYING!” And she will say “Okay bye!!!!!!” Not really. She might say, instead “Come on! You can do it! 5 more miles and then we can walk for a few minutes!” And I will think to myself “5 miles is a cinch. Okay!” And I will do it. When I reach about 7.5 miles I will down a few shot blocks and some water to help prepare me for the run.
OH — but I forgot to add that aside from all this there will be people passing me all over the place and I will be freaking out and there might be a slight chance that I will fall over and scrape my knee or something! I hope not! No scabs or bruises for the wedding day Please!

T2

Then when I come in after the bike, I have to try to remember to stand up on the bike for the last 1/2 mile-ish? So I can get my leg muscles ready to transition. I suppose I am supposed to hop off the bike, unclip my helmet, take it off, put my bike back up and just go for the run! Actually — now that I think about it, I haven’t thought about this transition AT ALL. Hopefully there will be people in front of me I can copy off of!

The Run

Here I plan to start jogging right away until I get out of the view of all the people at the transition areas. Jeez I can’t have them SEE me walking right away. That’s embarrassing. But I know I will probably have to walk about a 1/4 mi to regain some energy. Unless my sister is with me. She’s a strong runner and I know she will push me to run run run! Also I will be very warmed up with lots of endorphins, so we’ll see.

The Finish

I would love it if my sister and I could cross the finish line together!! We could cross it and give our chips back and say WOOHOO we DID IT!! And my mom would be there and get all obnoxious on us and WOOHOO over and over until we say “okay that’s enough. Thanks. Stop now.” She’ll take lots of pictures of us and then we will each pay $10 for BBQ. My mom will think she’s the exception and try to pay $10 to eat the BBQ, too, even though she is NOT an athlete… and we’ll have to sneak her some off of our plates. We love her! Then we will go back to the hotel room and shower and get WARM. Because… did I mention… the forecast is calling for 55 degrees?! At least the chance of rain went wayyyy down. But I don’t guess that really matters since I’m going to be wet anyway!

So… I don’t know? That wasn’t very romantic was it? It will be fun… and fine… and cold… but I will DO IT. I leave in an hour! I am stopping by Tommy’s office (it is exactly the halfway point to the hotel, which is three hours away) to eat an early lunch with him. Then I’ll be meeting my sister at the hotel and we’re off to packet pick up right at 3pm today! Yiippeee

Filed under: Goals, Rewards