A New Season

It's the start of a new season. Spring is definitely in the air. The flowers are bright, the trees are popping and new leaves are coming open. Spring for me also means another triathlon season is starting.

I started off the new season with the "fun" triathlon. I call it fun because it is a super easy triathlon that doesn't require a lot of training or a lot of mental prep. There aren't any sharks to freak out about, any forces of nature to contend with and its distances are short. This is definitely a triathlon for beginners or for people who just want to have a good time.

I convinced two friends to do it with me this year and we started our journey Friday evening by driving up to Pasadena. We stopped in Orange County to eat at Cafe Rio. We had yummy pork salads. After hitting minimal traffic we arrived at our hotel (more like motel) and camped out for the night. Not a lot of sleeping was had and conversation was aplenty. Like usual, sleep was hard for me before the race. When the alarm clock rang at 5:50am I felt like a mushed bag of potato chips.

After dragging the girls out of bed, well, only one of them, and slightly getting lost we made it to the Rose Bowl. We set up our bikes and were wondering around killing the last hour before the race started and what to our wondering eyes did appear, why a movie star, who has eyes that can leave an impression on you. I actually didn't recognize him, but I did note his eyes. Erika was the one who noticed him first. It was James Marsden, or Scott from X-Men, or Prince Edward from Enchanted. We chased him down, well Heather did, in a parking lot, like crazy stalkers and eventually got our pictures with him. I am sure that is what he wanted to do at 7am when he has his first triathlon to do. He was cordial enough and joked about the race. I saw him once more after the race, but didn't say anything. He actually did pretty will for his first tri and came in at 1:02. I know, I looked. I couldn't help myself.

He definitely looks better without a hat on and I definitely look better when it isn't 7am and I have had no sleep and haven't tried to look ok because I am doing a race, not going to an after party. Why do I look so much bigger than he does?

The race was great. I really wanted to get 1:09, but came in at 1:12:36. It was still a lot of fun. After we got all cleaned up we headed down to Old Town Pasadena for some lunch and shopping. We ate at this little french cafe and then had dessert at Pinkberry. After we arrived home I literally crashed. I went right to bed and woke up around 10pm to eat something and then went back to bed.

You can tell I am exhausted and just want to go home in that picture, but I did enjoy my pinkberry.

I am glad I did another triathlon, but am not sure when the next one will be. I just can't stomach the amount of time that it takes to prepare for one right now and after you have done one with someone famous, how could the others compare? For those who care, I place 14 in my age group and 63 out of 385 woman. Not to shabby.