Little Miss Runner Pants: IMKS 63.5 race report

so i guess i should get around to writing this bad boy, shouldn't i?!

m'kay. well.. here goes.

the night before the race, while i told my parents to SHUSH!! i'm concentrating, here!!!.. i went over... and over..

and over and over and over my race-day bag.

ok first i'll be heading to the water. i'll need my wetsuit.. check... goggles and swimcap... check... and timing chip.. check.

i'll get out of the water and will need a towel.. check...socks and bike shoes.. check.. helmet and sunglasses... check.. gatorade and gel's in the freezer.. check.. f*ck. what if i forget that tomorrow morning? no. i won't. it will be fine. in the freezer.. check...

after the bike i'll need my running shoes... check... biofreeze.. check... race belt... check.

and that's it!

then i'd stand there, looking at everything, and say again, outloud..

"okay. so first i have to swim, i'll need...."

and i think i more or less did that about 19 times before bed.

finally around maybe 9ish pm i sent my parents to bed, tucked asher in for the night, and crawled under the covers for some sleep.
i wasn't actually expecting to GET any sleep, but.. i did!! i got sleep!

... until about 1am when asher demanded that he be let outside to pee. after that, sleep was a crap-shoot, but until then... i got sleep!

at 3am the alarm went off. then again at 3:20.. then again at 3:40.

i was paranoid about sleeping in and missing the whole day. what can i say?!!

after a morning of okay. first thing i need is my wetsuit... and a seriously large protein shake, i packed my car and headed off to 0%'s house, where i rechecked my list, packed her car, and finally at 4:15am headed out to the lake.

it was nuts.
it was NUTS and there were tons of people, but...
i never really got nervous.
i was excited. in the back of my mind, i knew i could do this thing, and i was just really excited to be there.

setting up transition took far less time than i thought it would, so afterwards i did a lot of standing around, wondering ok so now what the hell do we do!?!

apparently... what you do is... TAKE PICTURES!!!

at about the time running jayhawk and i were goofing off taking pictures, we noticed i had some body marking issues that made me look like a total newb.

yeah. nice.

not only did i have it all over the back of my legs... it was seriously ALL. OVER. my quads. i'd somehow gotten it to more or less cover the front of my legs and at one point almost the entire row of women in our transition area were laughing at me as a photographer came to capture the mess.

classic!

i figured then it'd be a good time to wet-suit-up!

afterwards, it all happened so fast...

athletes were ushered out of transition. we went to the water to splash around while the navy seals skydived in. the race director sang the national anthem, and just like that... the pros took off.

holy. SHIT.

i just felt like grabbing father time and yelling at him to SLOOOOOW DOWWWWWN!!!

i barely had time to think. bam, next age group. bam next age group. suddenly they were calling all silver swim caps to line up and then. FINALLY.

i got nervous.
i got cry in my goggles a little bit nervous.
can't breathe, want to pee my pants (which i did. in the water. several times.) nervous.

but i had no choice. i took a quick pic with a friend...

ran up to see my mom and give her one last hug on the side...

and we were off.

this is for real.

.... HA! the swim sucked.

oooh, man it sucked.

the men in the age group behind us were brutal. i got elbowed in the face, shoved, kicked.. you name it, it happened.
but i didn't freak out.

i stopped a lot to tread water and let people pass me by, but..

i didn't freak out.
i just went REALLY SLOW!

52 minutes later i was crawling out of the water and the swim was done. i ran alllll the way around some flooding they had to steer us around, peeled off my wetsuit (losing my chip in the process), but.. i was done!

weeeee!