Races and zoos

After 2 months of training, my triathlon was last Saturday. The girls and I left on Thursday morning (picking up Paul's sister Christina at the airport on our way out of town so that I would have someone to drive with) and made the 5-hour trek to Dallas. Since we had a day to relax before the race, we headed to the zoo. About 2 months ago Hattie started asking if we could go to the zoo, her interest in animals suddenly increasing. Sadly, Lubbock has no zoo, so I told her that there was a zoo at Grandma's house. So as soon as I told her that we were going to Grandma's, she immediately asked if we were going to the zoo too.
She was certainly a funny zoo-goer. We would stop in front of an animal, look for about 3 seconds, and she was ready to move on. She had no interest in watching and observing the animals. It was a rather small zoo, so, combined with her short attention span, it took about an hour to see everything.
I think Anna enjoyed watching the animals more than Hattie.

We did enjoy watching the kangaroos, although Hattie was ready to move along the entire time.

And there was a little train outside, which was another highlight. Amazing how much a very slow moving train can entertain a kid!
And then the race! Sadly, my camera battery died, so this is my only picture :( We started with a 500 meter swim in the lake...glad I had a wetsuit. It wasn't horribly cold, but the water was rather turbulent, causing me to panic a little more, so I was grateful for the extra warmth and buoyancy. Because of the turbulence, my time was much worse than expected...but oh well.

Then the bike portion was 16.5 miles around the lake. That was certainly my favorite part. I am used to biking in Lubbock. Flat. Dry. Windy. Dusty. Lubbock. So riding through the rolling, lush, green hills south of Dallas was beautiful...I had to remind myself I was in a race! Then to the 3.1 mile run. Which was surprisingly hard! And here's why: while training over the last two months, I usually ran 3 miles first, then would bike for an hour, because the spinning class ended at 10:00, and I had to be somewhere at 10:30. Because of that, during the race my legs felt like jell-o when I started to run...I wasn't used to running after biking. Even though I wasn't necessarily out of breath or exhausted, I couldn't make my legs move any faster! It was a weird feeling...which gratefully only lasted about a half mile, so I was able to kick it in gear toward the end.

All in all, I had fun...I wish I would have had a friend along to share it with. But I am already checking out what triathlons are available in Utah this summer when we'll be there...and trying to convince Paul to train with me!