Ride N Tie

I had been looking forward to this past weekend's training for a couple of weeks now because we had a Ride N Tie on the schedule.  Not only did we have to find a partner (preferably one of the same height because we had to share a bike), but we were highly encouraged to wear costumes!  Right up my alley!  I pretty much knew the only person I could be partners with that would a) be just as excited as I was to get a costume; and b) be the same height was going to be Sedonia.  After throwing all kinds of ideas around for costumes, we narrowed down on being some sort of play on words.  And, due to all sorts of reasons I won't go into here, we picked Two Peas In a Pod.  

The morning started out with an open water swim.  One of my many many "issues" I am trying to battle with this training is to keep reminding myself that this is my own event and I can't care what anyone else is doing or even remotely feel bad about my own abilities because I'm comparing myself to others.  I must constantly reiterate to myself that I am only racing against myself and no one else.  So during the first round of swimming, I start to freak out that a) I'm out of breath; and b) feeling like I'm last.  In my head I am trying to rationalize why I am so out of breath.  Is it because it is so friggin' cold?  Is this a shock to my system?  After I get out of the water, I realize it is because I am one of the early ones out so my "out of breathness" is my own idiocy of thinking that I was last!  

Each time we finished a swim and ended up on the beach, we had to wait for our partner to get out of the water and do things like lunges while holding hands, wheelbarrow races, 3 legged races, and carrying an egg on a spoon.  BTW, do you know how hard it is to walk wheelbarrows in the sand????

After the swim, it was time to get in to our costumes.  Since we were running on trails, we were on mountain bikes this weekend instead of road bikes.  The goal was that one person had to ride the bike and another had to run.  There was a strategy on when to ditch the bike and when to run, but basically, we both had to arrive at a specific location and wait for the other person to get there.  Once we got there, we had to spin a wheel and do whatever the arrow landed on like burpees, squats, pushups, etc.  We were leapfrogging the same people for most of the time, but at some point we took a wrong turn because all the sudden no one was around us anymore.  Despite running and riding longer than we should have due to our detour and being hot as hell from running in a silly pea costume, we still had so much fun anyway!