Lessons Learned from a Non-Swimmer

It's amazing that something so small can have such a large impact in a race. Whether it is a tiny gravel you get in your shoe as you are trying to put them on in transition, dropping your water bottle during the bike section thus leaving you dehydrated for the rest of your race, or in my case this past weekend at the Ramseur Lake Triathlon using an anti-fog solution I had leftover in my swim bag that I already knew didn't work that well! No matter what the distraction you face during your event it can have a huge impact on your entire race and may even end it but it's what you do when you are faced with these situations that determine your ending.

The weekend started off great. I hooked up with Mike Dalsey  via some Facebook planning and headed down south for the evening. Along the way I got some pointers on how to approach swimming and open water swims from a guy that has been in the water his whole life. We had a great evening and I was feeling a lot better about doing my longest single swim and only my third open water swim.

The morning of the race, I woke up and was excited to finally get to represent my Runwell Ambassadorship with the new gear by Champion System which fit perfectly! Mike and I made our way to the course, set up our transitions, and I got a good warm up as I mentally prepared myself for the upcoming swim. After my warm-up, I grabbed some water, popped a few of my Energybits and then got my wet-suit on and headed to the water.  As I got in the water and put my goggles on they immediately started fogging up! I then began trying frantically to keep them from fogging to no avail, then the horn sounded and I was off swimming... blind. Needles to say this was not working so I stopped a few times to get some water in the goggles to wash out the fog but it just kept happening. I decided to take the goggles off,  flip over and backstroke which worked well but now my contacts were getting wet and sticking! I proceeded to zig-zag on my back with sticky contacts the rest of the first lap and as I started in on the second I stopped to sight and caught a glimpse of the front group, including Mike, heading for shore. I struggled through the last lap doing any combination of a super slow breast stroke and a sad heads up freestyle to keep my contacts dry and when I finally made it to shore I was tempted to kiss the ground!

Now I am finally ready to race... but coming out of the water 20+ minutes behind the leaders I knew I had no chance of making a top three finish so I decided to grind it out and see if I could at least claw my way back in to the top ten. My T1 transition was fast and I was up to speed on the bike in no time feeling great in spite of my double effort swim. It was a dark overcast day, but the yellow lenses in my new XX2i France 1 Pro glasses helped brighten things up and my mood! I was passing people like crazy which was both fun and motivating so I kept at it on a course that was rolling and beautiful. Maybe it was the tailwind or just the number of people I passed, but the bike leg seemed to be over in no time and as I took the right turn heading  back in to transition I was wondering where I stood in the overall. I quickly unbuckled my shoes, jumped off the bike and ran to get started with T2 asking the official if he knew how many were in front of me. He started counting bikes and as I ran out to start the run he yelled that it looked like sixteen ahead of me so I turned on the burners in hot pursuit of at least six people. At about mile two I had passed several people and finally got another glimpse of Mike. I was glad to see him and was hoping he was still near the top finishers and as I ran Cameron Chappell, my partner in crime in the spring Triad Duathlon Series, cheered me on. I caught as many people as I could during the first lap and then starting my second lap of the run course it became harder to know who was on the same lap as me until I started back towards the finish line. With two miles to go, it was clear I would catch no one else so I turned down the pace and cruised in to the finish line.

After it was all said and done, I ended up 7th Overall and 1st in my Age Group so I was happy with the result considering the sadly entertaining swim leg but man was I glad to get that race over with! Mike ended up 4th Overall and 1st in his Age Group so it was a great day for us and two others (John Harding and Lisa Dulong) from the Roanoke Valley. Rich Swor of Trivium Racing did an awesome job hosting this event and if you haven't done one of his races you should. He and his team work really hard to put on the best race possible and I am even looking forward to running in the Triad Ten Miler this coming weekend. Especially since there is no swimming involved!

Bridging my Passion with my Past.

Being an elite athlete sometimes is hard. Being so passionate about my sport, the workouts I do, and the accomplishments I achieve... sometimes people just don't understand me. After God and family it's what I get fired up for and excited about... what I have to do that day, how am I feeling, will it effect the workouts I have scheduled, and so on and so on. I am what most people call obsessed... I call it disciplined ;-)

Being a Physical Education teacher, after being away from it for several years, gets me even that much more excited about all of the aspects wrapped around leading and living a healthy lifestyle. I am in a school where the students truly need me and I go to work everyday looking forward to helping them be successful and putting a smile on their face. See, a lot of these children come from situations that are similar to mine growing up. An environment where addiction to drugs or alcohol is a daily struggle that they must be witness to and endure through.

It's a hard way to grow up and most of us end up falling victim to the habits we saw modeled for so many years... but not all of us.

Now, I have found a way to bridge my passion for health and exercise with my past of having to see relatives suffer through addiction for so many years. Enter- Runwell. A nonprofit organization that has at its heart and soul, a mission to shed light on the struggles associated with addiction. An organization that is passionate about helping people trade their habits of addiction in for habits of health! After researching the organization and several face to face meetings and phone conferences with the founder- Linda Quirk and VP of Marketing- Pam Rickard, it became very clear to me that I had to be a part of what these great people were working so hard to do. Now I am an ambassador for Runwell and I look forward to representing them and working with them for a long time to come! If you have a moment, please take a look at the Runwell website at http://www.runwell.com/ to see what they are all about. In the months to come I will share more of the great things that I get to do by being a part of this organization and will even reach out to you all to give you a chance to be a part of something bigger than us. If you are like me, you know someone that has struggled with addiction and this is our chance to reach out and help make a difference in their lives. I will keep you posted and in the meantime, continue to Runwell!