- Sunscreen should NOT be optional
- Picking up your race packet the day before the race (if it is not out of your way or inconvenient) means you can sleep in an extra hour or so
- Continually ignoring that you need to train for the run portion can cause you 51 mins of grief while you torture yourself “chasing” the 350 lb guy that is 75 meters in front of you for the whole 3.5 miles and never catching him
- The sunburn you get as a result of #1 will wear you out for the rest of the day more than the race ever could
- Lotion makes the body marking numbers come off before you have to go to church in the morning with your age in big black permanent marker on the back of your calf
- I am still freaked out every time I strip out of my wetsuit that my tri shorts will come off too
- The BEST answer when people ask, "Did you win?" is "I am still alive, so yes, I won."
- If you have a new triathlon watch, you need to remember to ACTUALLY use it; otherwise it is just a watch
- Receiving an encouraging text message from a friend (who is crazy to be up that early on a Sat (and not even doing the race)) right before you head for the starting line is a good thing to calm nerves
- All those energy/recovery balls, gels, bars, capsules, gummies, powders, mints, mixes, etc are actually quite useful in this environment. I had been avoiding them (in favor of using up my own natural “energy stores”), but I felt MUCH better throughout (and after) the race taking advantage of some of those things.
Seriously, how many more lessons do I have to learn? I guess that if I ran out, I wouldn't have anything to blog about though. :-)
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