this past sunday was finally the day of my first triathlon. after months, weeks, days, and hours of anticipation the time had finally come to do something that i never thought i would be able to do. i have never been a very athletic person and the thought of me swimming, biking, and running all the same day is something i would have laughed at years ago. now i do love cycling and i have been an avid cyclist for the past 5 years now but running and swimming are a different story. well i got talked into signing up for a triathlon by my co-worker ray and in january i signed up for my first triathlon. the date was set for june 27th. 

thankfully i had a cycling base so i was planning to use that section to at least try to make up some time of my slow swim and run times. i started training and jumped into the pool. the first attempt was terrible to say the least...i couldn't even swim 50 meters without being totally gassed. i couldn't even run a couple miles without feeling like crap. fast forward to may, i was still slow in the swim and run but i could now swim and run the race distances of 300 meters and 3 miles. i was pumped coming into june, i had been training alot with my buddy jared and we had been doing awesome brick training sessions and swim sessions. then in the first week of june, my training high quickly came crashing down. i woke up at 3 am and my ankle was on fire! it felt like someone had bashed my left ankle with a flaming sledge hammer.  this had happened to me before and had gone through physical therapy on this ankle before from a previous mountain biking injury. a few days later i could hardly walk and couldn't even sleep from the pain. i was more than angry, feeling like i had just trained 5 months for nothing because i wasn't gonna be able to race. i went to my doctor and he told me that i have gout and gives me some meds and tells me to lay off it and stay away from meats. great... i have gout and can barely walk 3 weeks before my first tri. i couldn't train anymore and felt like i had lost all the progress i made and began to become more and more frustrated because a week before the tri i was still having trouble walking on it.

i was thinking about not even trying to race but then i thought to myself, how disappointed i would be if i didn't even attempt it. so i made a deal with myself that i would do the tri and if at any point my gouty ankle got too bad i would call it quits then and get a DNF..which is better than a DNS (did not show) in my book.

a couple days before the race my ankle felt alot better but still nowhere near 100%. i had to be up pretty early so i tried to sleep pretty early saturday night....that didn't happen. i had so much stuff running through my head...not having been able to do anything for 3 weeks ....will i be able to run...what if i can't finish... all those thoughts were running through my head that night. i finally went to sleep and my alarm went off what felt like 5 minutes later. 

i get up and get everything together and bike to the race site which was luckily only a couple miles from my house. got my transition area setup and waited. found ray and jared..talked to them for bit. jumped in the pool and swam 100 meter warm up and felt pretty good afterwards so that helped calm the nerves. i was seeded pretty low and there were hundreds of people ahead of before it was my turn to swim. i waited and watched jared, holly, and ray go off on the swim and then it was finally here. i was off on the swim, all the nerves went away thankfully. the swim was like swimming in washing machine of people. surprisingly i had to pass about 4 or 5 people which shocked the hell out of me because iam a super slow swimmer.  out the pool and on the bike where i was most comfortable...that was over quick...next was the run. which i had been dreading because of my gouty ankle. off the bike onto the run ...man my legs felt like jello. about 1.5 miles in to run my ankle started bothering me and i had to stop and walk to give it rest but there was no way i wasn't finishing this thing strong. i ended up walking till about the 2.5 mark and than ran the last half mile to the finish. seeing my family and friends cheering me on through the finish line felt awesome!

i crossed the finish line and it was done. i knew it wasn't going to be as fast as i had planned cause i had to walk a mile of the run but i didn't quit and i still finished under my goal time. my final time was 1 hour 17 min.  i know i can cut that down by at least 12 minutes when my ankle gets better and i can actually run the whole thing. it was a great experience and iam hooked! i have already signed up for 2 more tri's this year and i hope my ankle get better better before those. 

so just remember to train hard and don't give up on whatever goals you have!