If your not gonna win it...

Race report! Man oh man. What a 'race.' to sum up my experience in simple terms, my motto became "if you're not gonna win it, you might as well document it!" how does that explain my race for you?

Don't get me wrong, this was definitely a race. In fact it's a fairly big deal race. There were five different evetns going on with nearly 3500 participants overall. There was the event Kate and I did, the off-road triathlon. There was the mountain bike race, the off road marathon, the miner's trail 15km run, and an adventure run that took the winner of that race over 6 hours. The tri combined a 2 km swim, the same 47 km track of the mtn bike race, and the same 15 km trail for the Miner's track run. The swim was the roughest part and contributed to a rather long mountain bike e experience. My legs finally warmed up and were ready to ride fast at the 22km left sign. Nice. So that's what happens when you don't train for a 2km swim in a frigid glacial lake with a surfing wetsuit that you tried on and got in the water a day prior. It's safe to say that I was eSsentially asking for rough, long and cold swim with an even rougher transition and first half of the bike. Lesson learned. I will for real never sign up for a triathlon that I haven't properly trained for. This habit must be broken.

So it's an experience that could have gone real sour...BUT it didn't. I went through a few phases on the bike.

Phase #1 - There is NO WAY I will be able to finish this race. No way. And "I have how long to go before I'm done with this thing" and "this royally sucks."

Phase#2- being irritated and mildly pissed off at the amount of money put into the entry/wetsuit/mandatory bike and gearchecks, etc and not putting the time into the swim/running portions to perform decently.

Phase#3- realizing how big this event is - the unsealed road we were riding on is only opened once a year for this event. It goes through very

remote and rugged mountains. Before the race we had to go to a bike shop to have our bike and helmet checked and we also had to carry specific cold weather gear/first aid/repair kit/etc in a pack on both the bike and run.

In this phase i was also starting to genuinely observe the natural beauty surrounding me (my legs slowly started to loosen up to). We really were in a remote area and the seemingly annoying gear checks in town a couple days prior started making a little more sense.

So this is 'time to change your attitude, steph' phase. This is when I came up with my personal motatapu motto " if your not gonna win it, you might as well document it!" and all the sudden the race became fun and enjoyable. It was effortless to enjoy where I was and embrace the moment and stunning scenery surrounding me. I started to feel the "how lucky i am to be here" feeling versus "oh geez what have I gotten myself into...how much longer of this crap" feeling that overtook me earlier on.

Phase#4- photosnapping-aholic - for racing standards. I was happy to have my camera handy. The run was much more successful and I was able to run most of the uphills and had a few chatting breaks in between thanking all the volunteers.

So yeah, no pr's were broken, no podium placement... But someway, somehow still managed snag an XTerra slot in Maui for the world championship race in October! The two other people in my age group declined the slot so it rolled down to ME!!! Yeah!!! I took it...And I have a whole 7+ months to get ready for it!

Thank again to all the volunteers who sat for hours on end in the chilly wind!