Race Recap: Chicago Triathlon, x 1/4

Saturday morning after finishing!

It has been a crazy week, y'all - my first week of orientation/work at Latin after two years off. The days have been filled with new faces, names, policies & procedures; the schedule was so packed with meetings and trainings that the only two concrete things I got done were to adjust my desk chair and set up my voicemail. Everyone is so friendly and helpful, but I miss my baby girl SO MUCH during the day. And sleep has been a bit lacking, since I've needed to wake up at 5 am to go for marathon training runs, and then the only time to do things like benefits/HR paperwork is at night. Whew! Transitions are hard. I know I'll get through this one just fine, and my family has been so supportive, but it is still hard.

So, Wednesday night at about 9:45 pm I went to chicagotriathlon.com to check on my wave start time for Sunday's Olympic distance race that I've been prepping for all summer - - - but when I put in my last name into the search function to see my bib number, it didn't have any results. "Strange!" I thought, then tried my first name. 0 results. So I tried "Joe." Plenty of Joes. There's a different spot on the site to put in your name to confirm your entry. Still no Danikas. 

Next, of course I searched my email for my entry confirmation - - - and apparently, I never actually registered for the triathlon. Yeah. Wow. MAJOR MISTAKE, and highly embarrassing. After quietly freaking out for a while, I started grasping for what other options there might be for an August race. And I realized that while online registration was closed, the website said that there MIGHT be spots open for Saturday's Super Sprint triathlon, taking place this year at Montrose Beach. A Super Sprint is half of the sprint distance, which is half of the Olympic distance, so a 375 meter swim, a 10K bike ride and a 2.5K run.

Friday afternoon I dashed out of work as quickly as I possibly could and drove down to the Hilton on Michigan Ave and breathed a huge sigh of relief when I was able to register. So then Saturday morning I woke up bright and early and rode down to get my bike and stuff into transition. Then Savva, Eliana, Lisa & Aislin all met up with me, and I headed down to the beach for the swim start. In contrast to the big tri on Sunday morning in Monroe Harbor, this one begins on the sand, and when the air horn sounds you have to sprint into the water with the 50 other people in your wave which results in a ton of splashing - it was SO MUCH FUN. I felt like I was 5 years old and literally laughed out loud with the joy of the feeling. The swim was great - I was very slow, like usual, (there were 47 people in my wave in front of me and only 2 behind) but I swam front stroke the whole way and the nice sandy bottom was a lot better than the scary seaweed in Monroe Harbor. The bike is on Simmons Drive, and you the same 1 mile of road six times (up & down, up & down, up & down) which is a bit boring but the good part is that I was able to see my cheering squad over and over again. Then I headed out on the run and before I knew it, it was over! I finished in 54 minutes and 12 seconds, 23rd out of 71 people in my female 20-29 age group and 256th out of 569 people all together. Not too shabby, I guess. :)

Afterwards our wonderful friends Ali & Foster made us breakfast (banana chocolate chip pancakes, yuuuuuuummmmm....) at their place and so it was pretty much a perfect day! Thanks guys!