This one's for you Meg!
This past Sunday I competed in my first ever Olympic distance Triathlon. This distance consists of a 1 mile open water swim, a 24.2 mile bike, and a 6.2 mile run. The weather was a little gloomy, but I had a wonderful time! There were 413 people competing in the race and my overall place was 253rd with a time of 3 hours 8 minutes and 9 seconds. Not close to the top 10 mind you, but my entire goal for this race was similar to the Sprint distance I competed in last month. That being, go out, have fun, and finish. I am happy to say that I did just that and I'm eager to do it again. =) I can worry about coming in at a higher standing later now that I have a time to use as a baseline for future races.
Included in the cut are some race pictures. I'm still scouring the photography site for more, so we'll see if I can find any.
Cycling
Running
More running
I'm very pleased with my time as I expected to come in somewhere around 3 hours and 30 minutes. The *only* downside to the race was that I had a slight cycling mishap after the race. On my way back to the car my front tire went flat, but having never been on a bicycle with a flat tire, I wasn't familiar with the warning signs. Namely, the "thump" feeling that is similar to riding a bicycle over an uneven sidewalk. I only noticed that my tire was flat when I coasted around a corner at what I'm guessing was 10mph. My front tire lost traction and down I went, landing on a curb before sliding to a stop.
All I could think about while falling was, "What the fuck? Why am I falling?! There is no reason for me to be falling! Damnit this is gonna hurt."
Several other people were on their way back and they stopped to help me pick myself up. I then noticed that my front tire was flat so I walked the rest of the way back to the car. When I got back home I cleaned myself off and was able to get a good look at the scrapes. Most were just deep scrapes where several layers of skin were removed. Two of them, one on my knee and the other on my arm, looked like divots so I can only assume some gravel caused those. All totalled I was sporting scrapes on my left thumb, right wrist, right elbow, right knee, and right ankle. My right torso had some dark bruising and road rash.
And now, as you asked for them Meg, here are some photos of my injuries. These were taken 3 days after the accident so they are well on their way to being healed, but I think they'll get the point across. I'm omitting the right and left hand pictures because they came out really blurry and they don't look that bad at this point.
Just in case you opened the LJ-CUT to see my race pics, I'm adding room so you don't stumble on injury pictures if you'd rather skip those.
Right Arm
Another of my right arm
Road rash and bruising
Right ankle
Right knee
Included in the cut are some race pictures. I'm still scouring the photography site for more, so we'll see if I can find any.
Cycling
Running
More running
I'm very pleased with my time as I expected to come in somewhere around 3 hours and 30 minutes. The *only* downside to the race was that I had a slight cycling mishap after the race. On my way back to the car my front tire went flat, but having never been on a bicycle with a flat tire, I wasn't familiar with the warning signs. Namely, the "thump" feeling that is similar to riding a bicycle over an uneven sidewalk. I only noticed that my tire was flat when I coasted around a corner at what I'm guessing was 10mph. My front tire lost traction and down I went, landing on a curb before sliding to a stop.
All I could think about while falling was, "What the fuck? Why am I falling?! There is no reason for me to be falling! Damnit this is gonna hurt."
Several other people were on their way back and they stopped to help me pick myself up. I then noticed that my front tire was flat so I walked the rest of the way back to the car. When I got back home I cleaned myself off and was able to get a good look at the scrapes. Most were just deep scrapes where several layers of skin were removed. Two of them, one on my knee and the other on my arm, looked like divots so I can only assume some gravel caused those. All totalled I was sporting scrapes on my left thumb, right wrist, right elbow, right knee, and right ankle. My right torso had some dark bruising and road rash.
And now, as you asked for them Meg, here are some photos of my injuries. These were taken 3 days after the accident so they are well on their way to being healed, but I think they'll get the point across. I'm omitting the right and left hand pictures because they came out really blurry and they don't look that bad at this point.
Just in case you opened the LJ-CUT to see my race pics, I'm adding room so you don't stumble on injury pictures if you'd rather skip those.
Right Arm
Another of my right arm
Road rash and bruising
Right ankle
Right knee