The Spudman!!

About a year and a half ago, my friend, Melanie, told me about this tri that had an easy swim because you could practically float down the current.

January came, and I signed Eric and myself up for the race. The catch - you're put in a raffle so you may or may not get in. The day we got back in California from our cruise, I got the email that said we were in! :) I WAS THRILLED!

So training began. Lots of swimming, lots of biking, easy on the running because my knee was giving me issues from doing The Dirty Dash in September 2010.

Training was going really well....and then the side-by-side crushed my foot on May 13th. After finding out it wasn't broken, I was extremely optimistic that we'd still do the tri.

However, 5 weeks of crutches put quite a damper on the training. At 3 weeks of crutches, I remember the doctor telling me I could do the tri, but I wouldn't be able to train - and I had at least two more weeks of my boot and crutches. I was devastated. So imagine the excitement I felt when just 6 weeks before the tri, I got rid of those crutches, and 4 weeks before the tri, I was able to run again.

Then two weeks before the tri, I tried for over a mile - and BAM. The knee was bugging me all over again. But hey, who said you couldn't walk a 10k if you had to!? :)

So off we went to Idaho - the last weekend in July.

We arrived, and went and got our goodie bags - which included this awesome shirt. Eric told me these creatures were the ugliest things he had ever seen. I had to explain that they were potato men- hence the SpudMAN. :)

After getting our bags, we had to take our bikes to the transition spot.

There was THIS dude sporting for us.

Wow... are those some tight jeans or what?!

After dropping off our bikes, we went to the carbo loading dinner.

That night, we got a bit of sleep, got all dressed in the morning at 6 am, and headed to the race.

We don't have any swimming shots - but Eric did take our underwater camera. We forgot to put an SD card in it. So, once we got on our bikes, we were going to pass our car, so Eric grabbed an SD card from the car. haha.

The swim went well. The current was awesome. Where we were doing a 35- 40 minute mile swim in the pool, we did an 18 minute swim in the current! SO COOL! Eric and I decided that we will do a sprint tri every year, and if we feel like doing the olympic again, we'll come do the Spudman because the swim is AWESOME!

Then it was off to the bike ride. I've been training on a hybrid bike but rented a road bike for the race. It was like going from a rusty truck to a ferrari. IT WAS AMAZING. I NEED to buy a road bike.

After getting off the bike, it was time for the run. The run in which I wasn't even sure I'd be able to run. BUT, two days before the race, I saw the chiro who thought my fibular bone was out of place, and the day before that, saw another sports medicine doctor who gave me a cortisone shot in the back of my knee thinking there was a tendon that was inflamed. So I was hoping for the best.

I ran a mile, and then the knee went. We averaged 14 min miles though - walking and running, so it wasn't awful. I'm now seeing an actual knee specialist - who thinks I tore cartilage under my knee cap. We'll see if he's right.

At the end of the last mile, Eric and I could see the finish line was soon, and ran as hard as we could - then did a cartwheel (me) and a forward roll (Eric) over the timing chip line, then ran straight through the finish line. They were reading everybody's names as they came across - it was awesome to hear our names over the speaker system.

And tah dah! SO happy we did the tri.

We stayed in Jessica's home -Jessica was Stephanie's mission companion at some point. She came and watched us finish. HOW SWEET! It was fun to have someone to run through for.

After the race, we took a shower in her friend's house (Jessica's house only has a tub), and went to Jack In The Box! YUM!

And then we went and got shakes at Jessica's sister's company, and went home.

It was AWESOME -and I hope I can get this knee thing figured out and do another one soon!