First Mini-Tri - DONE!

I was quite nervous about this - it was a lot of firsts all at once. Not only my first time combining all three sports in one day, but my first time out on the road on my bike in - oh, nearly 10 years! I had developed a bit of a phobia about it - the narrow rough shoulders, the steep up and down hills, the trucks that barrel along way too fast. But it had to be done. So:
Into the pool at 9am, 24 laps in about 19 minutes or so. Slow and comfortable - it's quite easy for me now to swim that distance. After the initial wobbliness in the first few minutes after getting out (quick rinse, quick change) I felt perfectly fine getting on the bike. But in trying to choose a direction (from where I was starting, I had four choices) I quickly realized I'd chosen wrong - I was going down, down, down hill, for miles. Looking ahead and seeing only more downhills, I turned around to come back up. So I only did about 6 miles, 3 of them riding the brakes and praying not to tumble off head over handlebars, and 3 of them struggling for every breath, stopping several times just to get my heart rate back to where I could see straight. Overall that took 30 minutes. One more shoe change, shed my windbreaker, and decided to do the run on complete flat ground: the baseball field. I set off around it, feeling about as I expected - leaden feet - but still OK. I made it twice around the field in about 9 minutes, and decided to call it a day - a total of nearly 60 minutes of exercise, more than I've done in any of my workouts (excepting Pilates) but not nearly as much as I'll need to be able to do 7 weeks from today! I think each week I should add a few miles/minutes to each leg (except the swim) and work my way up. Now - I feel wonderful! A few issues I'll have to research: it seems that bikers pedal on the downhill as well as the up. But the way my gears are arranged, I can't really pedal going down - the pedals just spin and I don't get traction. Plus I end up riding my brakes the whole way as I don't want to go too fast. I'm sure that's not what you are supposed to do! To be continued!