A Little Reward

In June I did a triathlon with my dad.

During the triathlon, there was this game a local sport store was doing called 'Pace Your Race'. You had to guess your race time before the actual events and the person who was the closest got a prize. I got the e-mail about it, but didn't sign up because while it's simple enough in theory, guessing your time unless you are a seasoned pro at a sport is relatively difficult. When we went to the park the day before the event to pick up our race packets they had a table there asking people to sign up and put their time guess. I said I had no idea because I had never done all three legs of a triathlon before, and they said, it's free, why not do it anyway. So, I went ahead an made a total guess of my time. The sheet had it separated out by triathlon leg and transition times. I figured that I could swim the half mile in 15 minutes, that I could bike the 12 miles in 45 minutes, and that I could run the 3 miles in 30 minutes, and then three 2 3 minute transitions on there for good measure - giving me a total guess time of 1 hour and 36 minutes. I added my name and e-mail address and handed them the piece of paper. My dad's response after looking at my time was, don't you want to add some seconds on there? This was a logical response since generally you don't finish anything in exactly 00 on the second hand, but I was literally making a complete and total guess and figured the seasoned triathlon people who actually knew how fast they were going to go would knock out my chances of being anywhere close enough to worry about the seconds.

So, guess what time I ran my first triathlon in...1 hour and 36 minutes and zero seconds. I am not even kidding you - the EXACT time that I guessed. You can check the site if you don't believe me (scroll the whole way to the bottom).

Obviously guessing it exactly was the closest you could get to your time, so I won, which meant... I won a pair of Saucony running shoes! Now it just so happens that I love Saucony running shoes. They are the shoes I trained for my first marathon in, but because they are $140 I decided to go with a more frugal $80 pair of Mizunos this time around. One of the reasons for this is because you actually need to buy 2 pairs of running shoes to train for a marathon. Shoes are only supposed to be run in for a certain number of miles before you break down the interior and they stop supporting you the way they are intended to, which then leads to injuries...especially if you are putting on double digit miles each week. Which means...yep, I get to wear my FREE Sauconys to run the Marine Corps marathon. It makes me much more happy about the 26 miles I'll be running in October!