While it wasn't interfering as bad as it could have been with my breathing, the chopping of the waves was - quite frankly - scaring me to death.

After just rounding the second buoy, I caught the attention of a boat close by and flagged the guys on there. A nice guy, Rick, jumped into the water in his wetsuit with a flotation device. I told him I was thinking about calling it quits, but as I relaxed and caught my breath, making small talk no less, I realized how badly I wanted to finish; how I knew I could finish, how I did NOT want this to be the story to come from this day.

I thanked Rick, put my head back in the water and just kept swimming. After that, I felt pretty great other than having to swim against the current a few times to stay on course. My arm muscles are sore as I write this.

Following some of the advice here on BT, I took off my wetsuit in the water as that's supposed to help. So, my swim time includes full wetsuit removal.

I seriously thought I'd be closer to 40 minutes given everything, but what do you know? I came in UNDER my goal time of 30 minutes!

This same course in last year's Sprint (the Sprint and Oly swims are the same distance) took me 47 minutes and it was a warm sunny morning.

Keep on racing. Though it would seem obvious, it really hit me that day that this sport is not just about conquering the distance. It's about getting punched, kicked, almost drowned and still moving forward.

My bike shoes have shoe strings so that seriously hampered my time. They are mountain bike shoes, a gift from a friend, so I'm just grateful to have a pair at this point until I can buy some.

I need a different pair of bike shoes.

Last year, the headwinds were strong because we were just starting to experience the remnants of Hurrican Ike. Honestly, it felt the same this year. The headwinds were quite strong in many places, keeping me down to 9 mph at some points, especially on my second lap.

I did, however, take full advantage of one particular downhill, reaching a speed of over 35 mph. Man, I love speed! That just felt awesome!

Though the headwinds were tough, I felt more than prepared for this event.

Anytime I started slowing down to catch my breath or relax "just a little," I told myself, "Every second counts, Lora!" and continued to push harder.

Do speedwork to get faster.

Thought I'd gotten out of the TA faster, but really didn't, I guess.

I just need to do more races to get more comfortable with the whole routine.

When I turned the second corner to start running on the grass, I thought, "Oh, my gosh! How in the world am I going to run 6 miles? That's so far away!" I just focused on taking it one step at a time, and believed that everything else would fall into place. It did.

Mile 2 to 3 was the hardest. I kept on waiting for the turn-around point, but it just seemed to take forever. There were a lot of volunteers there handing out goodies. I took some water but refused the cookies. "No thanks, guys. Just want to move on to be done with it."

I only stopped running to walk a handful of times so that I could drink some Powerade I had in a flask, and I stopped to stretch briefly a couple times. Other than that, I ran the whole thing!

As I got close to the finish line, I heard a girl's voice come up behind me. "Hey, let's do this. Let's finish strong." So, we started speeding up some together. She said she'd been chasing me for 2 miles (Wow! There were people in the Oly behind me?).

As we got even closer to the finish line, I was giving it everything I had, but I puttered out and she beat me. That's OK, though. If I hadn't have sprinted that hard, I would be one rank lower overall because I beat the person behind me by two seconds.

EVERY SECOND COUNTS!

DO MORE SPEEDWORK! Can I say that enough?

Stretched a little, ate half a banana and slipped into some jeans and sandals. Again, I should have spent more time stretching as I'm still feeling it two days later.


Not doing speedwork in my training. How many more times am I going to write that down in a race report before I finally start doing some?


I seriously thought I'd come in dead last. Afterall, I am upping my race distance and I'm just that slow of a girl. For me to not come in dead last like I did in this Sprint last year, is a huge boon to my confidence.

Even though this was my first Oly, I'd been beating myself up for not being stronger and faster to make the cut-offs for the HIM swim and bike. Though the math was absolutely, without a doubt not adding up to do it, there's still a part of you that wonders if you're chickening out; if you're just taking the path of least resistance.

Conquering that swim (man, I can't tell you how scared I was!) affirmed my decision and reminded me that I'm anything but a chicken.

I got teary-eyed on the way home just thinking about how I won my battle that day; how extremely grateful I am to the Lord above that this little body of mine works. It could be snapped away from me at any moment and I refuse, absolutely REFUSE, to never appreciate this amazing life before me!

WOO HOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!