My First Triathlon

By Sheryl

Darleen and Sheryl in their First Relay Triathlon

This season has been kind of crazy. I haven't done any bike racing and we moved again for the second time in two years. So, despite having almost no time to train and not knowing how to swim, I decided to try a triathlon near my new home town.

The Wilkes Barre Triathlon is olympic distance. I was smart enough to know I needed help for this one, so I enlisted my cousin and honorary Bella, Darleen, to do the run. I took 6 weeks of swimming lessons, attached some aero bars, got my totally awesome Bella tri kit, and I was ready to go!

The triathlon was this past Sunday and there were about 500 competitors. Nervous, but excited, I got my race numbers painted on, and I jumped into Harvey's Lake for the swim. 0.9 miles of open water swimming is a whole lot farther than I thought! Not to mention, everytime I put my head down into the water to swim free-style, I would see the waving seaweed, get totally disoriented, and panic. I ended up swimming the whole distance backstroke.

I had a reasonably good swim to bike transition, but with the shaking fatigue in my body from the endless swim, I struggled on the hills. I was never so happy to see my runner waiting in the transition zone after cycling the 25 miles with my heart rate about 190 bpm!

We finished 4/5 in the women's relay field. I am just grateful that we did finish. Next year I am going to try it again and race as an individual...and you can bet I will be practicing swimming in open water!