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Jackie

State:

CT

Sport:

Triathlon

Age Group:

30-39

Description: Mother, Educator

What surprised me about training:

The amount of gear was the most amazing thing

What gave me the most pride on race day:

Having stuck to the plan and that race day was fun. There were no surprises.

Most valuable lessons learned:

The camaraderie was great. The thing that I still love is that there are so many little goals you can set along the way. This year, it was just completing the race, but now it's so cool, there are lots of ways to challenge yourself.

Last winter, my friend, Elysa, and I agreed to start running together, and we made a deal that when we could run 3 miles together, we would sign up for team training to do our first triathlon. We joined our Jill B. Nimble team in spring. Coaches Janice and Lynne made us feel so welcome, and they worked hard to prepare us. I loved feeling such great support - from my coaches, from Elysa, and from my team members.

Although the training was fantastic, our coaches did not prepare us for a few things, like... how much fun the race and all the surrounding hoopla would be, how unbelievably proud we would feel, how close we would feel to all of our team members, how amazing it would be to see our families and friends cheering us on. We even laughed about how we might consider quitting our jobs and deserting our families to train full time and travel the country going from event to event. Even though we are somewhat humble by nature, we didn't know we would become complete braggarts, (by the way, I was the 507th fastest swimmer that day -and that was with doing at least half the course breast stroke!).

Just imagine what I can do next year!!

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