I am an IronGirl... Well not yet!

Hello again! Sunday I had the Iron Girl race, just outside of Atlanta. Unfortunately I had a pretty bad race, but as my dad says “it happens to the best of us”.

The morning of the race I had a cookies and cream Luna bar for breakfast, and it wasn’t the best choice, because all of the sugar makes me kind of shaky L, and I hate being shaky!  I know, I know, my parents tried to get me to eat more because this was a long race.  But, I didn't.

So, I set up my transition, and then my mom and I went down to the porta-potties. On the way there I stubbed my toe, and boy did it hurt, but not as much as my tummy later (oops ruined the surprise)! My mom said that hopefully that was the worst thing that would happen today. I am so anti porta-potties that I didn’t go into them (and I should have)!! 

Then we were on our way to the start. When we got down to the start I was SUPER shaky and my tummy hurt. My mom took me to the restroom (yeah, not a porta-potty) but no success, so went headed down to the start, and did a little warm-up swim which felt great. Then the pros went off to an Aflac quack -- cute, huh, since Aflac sponsors IronGirl -- and they were going pretty darn fast!!  My mom went, and then I was standing in my wave.  I was with Big Chloe and Lisa W. We started our wave, and I felt good on the swim, I’m pretty sure that my time was around 10 minutes, pretty good for a hurt tummy.  My mom had her first swim in 2 years.  She had 1 bad swim and hasn't wanted to swim since then, and I like swimming for her.  But, she had a great swim - Go Mom!

I saw my mom in transition, then onto the bike… Yuck, was it awful (not the course, although the hills were tough). My stomach was a mess! I had to stop at mile 13, because my stomach was hurting so badly that I had to drop out. The weird thing is that Big Chloe also stopped at mile 13. Not because her tummy hurt, but because she got not one flat tire, but TWO. She also had a DNF, and I thought that was weird because both of the Chloe’s didn’t get to finish. But, some good came out of my 1st DNF: when the super-nice course officials picked me up to meet with my parents, and we saw a lady on the side of the road, and she had a flat tire L. I gave her my tire and tube, so she could finish the race because it was her first one. I hope that she had a fun first triathlon and congrats to her for finishing.  This made me realize that eating right really does matter, that I need to use porta-potties, even if they are gross!  

My brother and father did a great job of cheering us on.  And my mom had a great race (WooHoo Mom).   

And, Lake Lanier was a lot of fun, even though the race didn't go so well for me.  When we first got to the resort my mom said that we could choose one thing to do, and I chose to go horseback riding. When my mom was younger she was an awesome horseback rider, and I wanted to go with the whole family. We had scheduled it for Sunday, and by later that day I felt somewhat better. I got a horse who loved to eat, and I mean LOVED to eat. I had some trouble at the beginning to get him under control because all he wanted to do was eat! My mom got a horse name Buck, and it would get mad if any other horse tried to pass or got to near to him while we were on the trail. My brother got a horse name Melody, and my dad got a horse name Eeore, and he liked to get really close to trees, and he has a reputation of trying to make people get off, and he LOVES the water. The guide that we were with said that his horse once ran into the water with a person on the back! I thought that was pretty funny!!

I’ll be back online, because I have a race on Saturday in Marianna.  I'm going to try eating like my parents tell me to, and I'll let you know how it goes.  I may even use a porta-potty ;-))

Please let me know if you are doing the Freedom Springs race! I would love to meet you!

 

Thanks for reading.