Triathlon

Here’s a little timeline of when I started with each triathlon discipline:

I’ve loved biking since I was a kid. So I got into mountain biking as soon as my mom would not freak out with long rides (I sometimes did 12 hr rides!).

Swimming and running are relatively new to me (specially running). Here are the dates I remember:

April 2007 – bought my Specialized FSRxc Pro so I started mountain biking again after 8 years of no riding. Before the Specialized, I was biking about once a month and by myself. With that bike I began riding every weekend. I’m really grateful Carol told me to splurge and go with a full suspension Specialized “because it’s what you like to do”. I love you Carol.

December 2007 – did a little swimming during the winter just because I could not bike any more. I swam once a week at Life Time Fitness and only did it for about 2 months. Before this I really only swam about 4 times a year when I was on some sort of vacation.

Mt bike 2008 – I was in love with my Specialized mountain bike so I biked a ton. I biked with some Neumont students, then with Justin “the wildman” Haaga, then Nick (whom I met because he was Neumont’s student IT worker), and then the Goathead Riders (Cody, then Daren, and then Shaun “The Machine”. Justin was also a goathead rider.)

December 2008 – did a fare amount of swimming at Life Time Fitness during winter. Twice a week for about 4 months.

Mt Bike 2009 – That was truly the year of the Goatheads. We all knew each other and we all loved mountain biking. We biked tons and really got to know each other. Saldy, the wildman slowly stopped biking with us since the beginning of the season.

September 2009 – got my Fuji Absolute commuter bike and used it a bit until winter struck. I had no idea I was going to get into the whole triathlon thing so I did not get a road bike. I ended up using this bike to train and compete on a lot of triathlons.

October 2009 – began running mostly because of The Machine. Without doing a lot of talking, he got us all excited with his “hardcoreness” and the whole triathlon thing. I had biked for months with the guy without knowing he had done multiple Ironmans, super long running (50 and 100 miles), and weird races like the ones that go on for multiple days where you do rock climbing, horse back riding, along with running and other stuff.

November 2009 – did my first triathlon, the Turkey Tri organized by Shaun (the machine). It was a “splash” distance, meaning shorter than the shortest official triathlon distance, which is a “sprint”. 3 mile run, which that was the furthest I had ever done. 350 meter swim, which was ok since I had done some swimming the last 2 winters. And 10 mile bike ride on the road, I used my commuter bike and it performed great no big deal since I had been seriously mt biking for a couple of years.

March 2010 – ran my first half marathon. The Canyonlands Half Marathon.

April 2010 – did my first olympic distance triathlon. The Daybreak Triathlon. 1500 meter swim, 21 mile bike, and 10km run (6.2 miles)

October 2010 – ran my first marathon. The St. George Marathon. My knee had been giving me problems during training. It got really bad for a while and I had to stop running for a couple of months. After that I had like a month and a half to get my training back on track without injuring myself; I was able to do that. But on the last miles of the marathon, my knee started to hurt again and I had to walk the last two miles =(. My total time was 4 hours 35 minutes. I know I can do better than this!

April 16, 2011 – Ran the Salt Lake City marathon. My time was 4 hours 13 minutes. I was rally disappointed that I didn’t do it in less than 4 hours. This time my knee only bothered me a little; but my legs were cramping really bad on the last 4 miles so I had to walk at times. I think I started too fast, but maybe I needed to train a little more.

April 2011 – Carol and I had Anika! We’re really happy she is with us but this will definitely make me train a lot less.

June 2012 – Daybreak Triathlon. Sprint distance. 1h 39m total time. Swam 750m in 20 mins, biked 14 miles in 46 mins, and ran 5km in 28 mins. The weather was absolutely perfect, water felt great with wetsuit on, bike ride was a bit chilly but my body warmed up as I got going.

August 2012 – Rode 103 miles on the Utah Lake Century Epic Ride (ULCER). My overall time was 7 hours, and my moving time was 6:15. I had 1000 ft of elevation gain and it went around the Utah Lake. I did it with Cody, Nicholle, and Jeff H.