PirateGirl's group - CLOSED - Pirate ship has sailed! (Page 3)

Have a great time at your swim tonight! Where will you be swimming? I'm jealous of you PHX area peeps that have a lot more access to open water than us Tucson peeps. Closest lake for us is 2 hrs away.

Tempe Town Lake (TTL) is only going to get warmer. So I would think if you can bear the water temp, you'll be just fine. If you can, take a thermometer with you to your swim tonight to see what the temp is. Then you can watch TTL's temp and know for sure if it will work.

You definitely want to take the time to shop for a wetsuit. Rentals can be good to try and see what you like, but I know TriSports charges $50 for rentals. But you can apply that to the purchase of a suit. Not sure if PHX area tri shops do the same. I bought a ProMotion online, and with the BT discount, it was $150. So I didn't bother to rent as that was 1/3 of the suit price.

If you haven't already, check out the AZ forum here on BT: http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/forum-view.asp?fid=32#s

Folks on there often post when they are going to do an OW swim practice. They used to have one every Thurs night.

Let us know how tonight's swim goes!

Sweet! Awesome goal to have. You can do it!

And would you register for your Oly already!!! Don't let it fill up and close out. That would just suck to miss a race you had been training for and looking forward to.

Uh, yeah! I can't imagine the logistics of such a race. Figuring out the packing list alone is an endurance event in and of itself!

Were you on a team for the 12 hr? If so, how did that go? I've had good team races and bad. I learned not to do a team race with people you don't know well and the only commonality is that you belong to the same tri club. What a disaster that was. Never again. Now I only race on teams with friends that I know will try hard and have fun.

So I just told my hubby about the Xterra WC goal. He's cool with it. Mostly because I told him I'd be doing the local mountain bike sprint races next season to work on speed, and he wants to do those too. But he needs a lightweight race MTB (he only has freeride and downhill bikes). So of course he's happy. He gets a new bike out of it. Hey...wait...he just bought a cyclocross bike this weekend! Somehow my racing is causing him to get more bikes!

Not just yet, check in again in a month or two? 

Doing a triathlon (any tri) has been a back-of-mind, want-to-do thing for almost two decades (gasp!).  After getting unexpectantly laid off from my, albeit cushy, parttime telecommute job, I sat down to start thinking about what *I* want to do besides just be a (Great) mom to my two young kiddos.  Rather than a phenomenal career idea forming from this introspection, my triathlon dream popped out --- here I am

So I'm just following this path for now - using those parttime work hours for training.  Where I go from here (in career or tri's) I really need to revisit.  Later. 

Elaine- I've got a muddy buddy question - what's a nearsighted gal to do?  dig up the old contacts lenses?  or I really don't get muddy until the last obstacle?  And are gloves recommended? 

Still waiting for someone to commit to race with me, have a few nibbles... 

And here you are, about to experience your dream! Enjoy every minute of it on that day, and realize you did something truly awesome. And most importantly, you did it for YOU!

I'm right there with ya. I wear an old pair of prescription sunglasses for the whole race. It's not muddy until the end. You still get mud in your eyes, mouth (shut your mouth when crawling through the pit!), ears, etc. The sunglasses kept most of it out of my eyes, and they were easy to hose off afterwards. They have garden hoses at the end to get the major mud off. Just be sure to bring a change of clothes and lots of towels.

I have some pics from the LA Muddy Buddy here, in case that helps to show you what a typical course looks like: http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/photos/photo-thumbnails.asp?albumid=7139

I only did 3 miles of biking total, so I didn't bother with gloves, and didn't need them for any of the climbing obstacles. You could wear them and ditch them by the bike for the mud pit. The bike gets dumped in a corral, and you can put other stuff there too, like your glasses if you wanted.

Great goal! You've already improved by 3 min/mi average. Keep chipping away at it. It's good you've got the endurance. The speed will come with time and with pushing hard when you can. It took me a couple of years of doing this before I could get to a comfortable 10K endurance-wise...forget the speed part.

You do belong! You're out there doing it and that's all that matters. Everyone has to start somewhere. I try to remind myself that some of those speedy people that are finished by the time I get on the bike didn't used to be so speedy. Heck, some may have been just like me years ago. So I figure there's always hope.

For sure IMAZ 2010 and also Chicago Marathon 2011 (old stompin grounds)!

That's what you need for the longer events.  There was a thread somehwhere on BT where a fella commented that he could finish first against his wife at the shorter distances, but she had a 3:30 mary and he was waaaaay behind that.

Not that I'm competitive or anything (hahahaha) but I was pleased to be only a minute behind my husband in the mini tri I/we did - easily 30-40 seconds of his lead was just the pool; he grew up on teams, I floated.

So enjoy YOUR strengths and don't worry about the rest of 'em/us. 

Of course there was also the march challenge and some number of the BT crowd now sports those awful Easter peeps in their avatars.

And here is your cheat sheet on acronyms too:

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=1014 

I'm doing the April challenge.  So far we're MOP so I should be OK.  Of course I joined April to get my strength training up and that's my weak record for April.  s/b/r are all at/above goals.