Tri U Mah -- kickin' off the year...

Today was one of the coldest days of the winter for us here in Minnesota, so it must be TRI U MAH!

Tri U Mah is an indoor triathlon held at the University of Minnesota. The event is held at the U's Rec Center and participants spend 30-minutes each swimming, biking on a stationary bike and running on a treadmill. The total distance covered over the entire 1 1/2 hours is then calculated as results.

This is the fourth year that the event has been held and it seems to always happen on the coldest day of the winter. Today was no different. When I got up this morning to get ready to go to the Aquatic Center for my heat, the air temp was around -18 degrees -- windchills were more than 20 below. Brrrrr...

Even though it is always such a cold day when this event happens, I love the fact that we can do the swim a pool (makes site-ing so much easier!) AND the sponsors have really great give aways. I've received some really nice gym bags and shirts plus the post-race food always rocks.

This year, some of the sponsors set up some booths to hawk their wears. There was a woman who designs "tri" jewlery and items. I got a couple of bag-tags and a key chain. The photo a the top of the page is of the key chain.


My heat started at 10:20 am. Several of my running/tri buddies were also signed up for the event. Gary's heat started before ours -- Marcia, Nat and Marc were in my heat, along with a friend of Nat's, Heather, who was doing her first tri.

The U has a GREAT aquatic center. The pool is wonderful. I felt very confident in the water and swam well. My swimming has really improved since I started this whole triathlon thing a few years ago. Not that I'm a great swimmer (meaning I'm not very fast OR confident in open water), but I am happy that my endurance is stronger and that I really do like the activity. Except for the whole "goggle-eye" thing, which is HORRIBLE for me, swimming is a wonderful activity that I can see doing for many years to come.

I am glad that I have been doing some spinning over the last few weeks. I'm always surprised at how tough spinning can be. I keep thinking that, because I have bigger-than-the-average-bear legs that I would have a lot of power in them and that biking should be much easier. Ha! I was just glad that I got through the 30-minute segment.

My run went pretty well, considering I'm really not running well right now. I kept my heart rate at a comfortable Zone 3 level (about 163 bpm) and ran for 20 mintues before I needed to take a bump off my inhaler. I slowed down the belt but then had a problem with my treadmill. I couldn't get the speed adjuster to move up or down.

Some of the volunteers came over to try to help me, but no one could get it to work, so they moved me to a different treadmill. I lost some time/distance having to do switch machines mid-race, but am not really sure how much of either I really lost.

I cranked up my pace for the last 8 minutes or so and had an "okay" time for the 30 mintues. (Although I am still much, much slower than I was last fall.).

My friends all did very well in the event. Gary blew everyone away with his biking -- covering over 9 miles during his 30 mintues. Nat, who says she hasn't been training much, really did very well; Heather had fun during the event and covered a lot of territory. Marcia, who has done 2 other winter events already (including a 1/2 marathon) looked very strong. Marc did really well too.

Here are my final stats:

Tri U Mah Over the Years

Year:	2008	2007	2006	2005
Swim	.74	.76	.61	.58
Bike	7.07	6.42	6.16	6.35
Run	2.93	2.49	2.48	2.44
Total	10.53	9.67	9.25	9.37

After the event, we all went out for lunch. I had a great time catching up with everyone. Traveling so much has taken me out of my normal "friend" time and I really miss it.

I have to travel again this week -- going back to Las Vegas for a Sales Conference. At least I'll get out of the cold for a few days. But, I'll miss my Hubby and my buddies.