My First Triathlon

I would have never told you that I would go to Doha and do my first triathlon there, but that's exactly what happened this weekend. Not only did I do a triathlon on Saturday, but I did a biathlon on Friday the day before as well.

I had signed up for the biathlon about two or three weeks prior thinking it would be a fun thing to do. It's the 2nd annual Biathlon organized by Education City and it was only a 500m swim and 5k run. The swim I was done with in 7:39 and my overall time was 33 minutes. Not bad for a Friday morning! I was a little weary going in because I don't have very many items of clothing that are good to both swim and run in, but I ended up wearing swimming briefs and a sports bra with a rash guard shirt over it to swim, changing into a pair of spandex shorts and a tshirt to run in. I was a bit nervous as well about the shoulder, see previous posts for background story, and how it would hold up but I tested it out on Thursday and it seemed to do fine. It was a little sore afterwards, but it only needs a bit of a warmup. I ended up doing pretty well - first prize for the women's was a much larger trophy than I needed, a couple of athletic items, and a free flight to Dubai (thanks to Emirates airline being the sponsor)!

Friday was a good test to see what kind of challenge my body was up to for the next day, which was the triathlon. Literally, I was signed up for the triathlon on the previous Thursday. I had heard about it a day earlier and didn't think I could still sign up, but turns out my usual cycling group was assuming that I would do it with them! Talk about peer pressure. I was actually really glad to have done it with them because it made it loads less intimidating. There was no lack of intimidation either - I was the only woman who signed up to do the individual event. A handful of women participated in the team category, but I was the only one doing the whole thing by myself. I think I won respect just by that fact alone. The actual race was an 800m swim, 20km bike, and 7km run. I told myself I'd be happy to finish under 2 hours. I finished in 1:28.40. I was the third person out of the pool, passed by a bunch of people on the bike b/c I got lost (we were riding through a residential neighborhood), and I passed one person on the run. I ended up coming in 6th overall out of at least 17 or 18 men, so I was pretty happy with myself. AND, because I was the only woman who did the individual triathlon, I got another trophy, a medal, and 1000QR worth of gift certificates to boot. I think I would have done even better had I had better gear (I had quite a few wardrobe issues in the transitions... took me 4-5 minutes just to put on stuff I could run/bike in after getting out of the water).

I seriously can't even say how glad I was to have not only a team of 4 other people doing the triathlon with me but also to have one of those teammates being a veteran triathlete. I would have never done this had it not been for them, and for that I say thank you. It's too bad that there aren't more triathlons throughout the year. Or maybe it's a good thing... otherwise I might have found a new sport...

So now I have two large trophies sitting in my apartment and nowhere to put them. I have a free ticket to Dubai, and 1000QR worth of gift certificates. I guess you could say I had a profitable weekend!