Kure Beach

I signed up for a triathlon that was down at the beach over the weekend. When I signed up I had no idea that I would be overly busy with school work to train all that much, but oh well. This was my first triathlon I did two years ago and I enjoyed it then, so I thought I would sign up again.

The format is crazy as it is a 375m ocean swim, followed by a 1.5 mile run, 12 mile bike, 1.5 mile run back to the beach and another 375m ocean swim. Now 2 years ago when I did this race the ocean was beautiful and calm race morning. Yesterday, we got to the beach and were welcomed by lots of wind, a little sprinkling rain and huge waves and crazy undertoe. At first I thought, no big deal about a month ago we raced surf n turf and it was pretty bad their. But after what I went through yesterday, I don't want to do another ocean swim again. I was seriously scared out of my mind.

First the buoys they anchored out (kind of past the breakers) all came undone and floated away since the surf was too much. So the race director had the lifegaurds swim out and hold the buoys in place. How they did this...who knows. We were all convinced that practically everyone swam a different swim course. After the first swim and being hammered by the waves I wanted to give up, but I fought through a painful run and a pretty great bike to not give up. On my way back on the worse run ever I did not want to get back into the ocean. And actually it was way worse the second time around. It took so much energy to get out to the lifegaurds and on the way back in a got taken under by a wave just flipping me upside down underwater. When I got up to the surface gasping for air I got swept under again and flipped around-total black and very scary just hoping that I can hold my breath long enough to resurface and get some air again. It was just horrible.

I have never been so happy to finish a race. You can read the race report if you want-over at our website link on the right.