The Utah Half, 8-27

I did my first half ironman!
70.3 miles of swimming (1.2), biking (56), and running (13.1).

The venue:

It started and finished at Utah Lake.

As we were heading over to the starting line, we bumped into John's cousin Molly who was also doing it.
It was fun to chat while waiting for everyone to start.













They had three waves of men start 5 minutes apart before starting all women at the same time.













I was super nervous the whole week before and happy to finally have the pit in my stomach gone as soon as the race started.

As with most triathlon swims, it was a mess. Aside from the usual beatings, there was a girl that swam on top of me for the first 100 meters...so frustrating.
After dropping her, I enjoyed a short reprieve of personal space before catching up to the men. It was quite the task to maneuver around everyone.

I was happy to get out of the water and head to T1.

The bike was nice and uneventful. It was fun to chat with a few friends, one of which I hadn't seen since high school days.

I was excited to transition to the run and felt pretty good for the first half...

But the last half was really painful. I didn't have enough electrolytes and my legs cramped up pretty bad.

I was so happy to see the finish line!

These are the wonderful people from Altra running shoes who sponsored me for the race.

I was the 3rd female finisher and 16th overall in a field of 400.

My finish time was 4:33:23:

Swim-30:05

T1-1:11

Bike-2:27:33

T2-1:19

Run-1:33:15