Triathlon.

For my first wedding anniversary, I bought my husband admission tickets to the Silicon Valley Sprint Triathlon.

Now usually when our friends find out about this, it initiates a series of questions. I will take my liberties to answer them now:

1. Yes, I bought tickets for both of us. We are doing it together.
2. No, neither of us has ever done one before.
3. Yes, when I bought the tickets I was fairly confident that he would actually like it. Similar to the time were I took him surprise skydiving. But that's a different story.
4. Yes, I'm getting very nervous.
5. Yes, the swim is outdoor. It's in a reservoir somewhere in Mountain View.
6. The water temperature is expected to be around 68 degrees.
7. Yes, we plan on looking into renting wetsuits.
8. No, I am not nervous about the swim. I swam competitively, so that is not an issue. The water temperature makes me nervous, but the 1/2 mile swim does not.
9. No, I am not good at biking and yes I am very nervous about it.
10. It's in April.

This past weekend, we decided to give all three legs of the event a trial run. Back-to back-to back, just like in the real event. Since we've never really done this before, we didn't really have the concept of how long a 1/2 mile swim, 16 mile bike ride, and 3 mile run was going to feel. We've been pretty good about training - we go to the gym at 5:30am several mornings a week, run, lift weights, swim, bike, etc. But we've just never done all of these things at once. So, a trial was definitely necessary.

Ok, at the end of this little experiment, this was basically me:

But I have brown hair. So imagine that with brown hair. 

IT WAS SO MUCH LONGER AND HARDER THAN I THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BE.

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. We run. We bike. We swim. But we usually dont bike super hard for an hour and then go run three miles. Cause honestly, who does that? Crazy people. That's who.

I will tell you one thing that was pretty kick ass in this little weekend experiment: It was pretty rough for both of us. And by the time we got to the run, we were both barely hanging on. And Steve, being husband that sometimes channels his inner "super husband," turns to me right as I am mentally questioning if I can just crawl home, and says, "You're doing awesome babe. You got this. We've kicked ass today, and I'm super proud of you. We're going to get through this together. Just a little more, keep with me."

Dude. 

I lost my shit.

As we rounded the corner onto Steiner, and just 3 blocks from our "finish line," I waived him on. "I got this - finish your race. I'll see you at the end." And he rounded the corner and sprinted home.

And then I promptly started bawling like a little baby because my husband can be so f-ing awesome sometimes he doesn't even know it.

So three blocks later, when I literally willed my legs across our "finish line," I feigned the tears as sweat and gave a big high five.

And then I basically felt like this guy:

Needless to say, we have plans to keep practicing in the coming weeks to make sure that we don't totally die. And I'm nervous about it, cause now that I know how much work it is, I'm kinda hating myself for suggesting it in the first place. 

But I will say this: getting this as an anniversary present was totally the right idea. It's a super cool feeling to go through this together,  knowing we're totally a team through whatever happens out on that course.

Hearts,

-J