team sports

Things that are dumb: 

Squirting shampoo directly into your eyeball and not being able to see clearly for several days. (This happened Thursday morning. I'm still dealing with it.)

Agreeing to do the Iron Girl sprint as part of a relay team with some other wine folks right in the middle of an extraordinarily busy weekend of work. 

Picture me sneaking away from a media lunch to go rack my bike. (Of course I chose the bike leg. Muppet is my one true love.) 

God, she's so hot.

And then having barely any time to get ready for the semi-formal auction event afterward, then getting bridged not just once but twice on the drive over, and then finally showing up stressed out and really, really sweaty.

And it gets even dumber. My plan was to leave the auction festivities early so I could be in bed by midnight at the very latest. And we did leave early. We just decided that since we were dressed up -- such a rare thing -- we should make one more stop before calling it a night. Four stops after that, it was 2 a.m.

Which meant I got exactly 1.5 hours of sleep before this race. See? Epitome of dumb.

Yet I dragged myself out of bed to meet my relay team at 5:30 a.m. and carpool to the race. Our ride was a molester van, no joke.

Don't worry. There were no human bones back there.

The whole time I was thinking: Please don't get carsick. And dear god, who smells like whiskey? Oh wait -- that's me. 

I still rallied, though.

A little (OK, maybe a lot) groggy, but ready to roll.

All discomfort was forgotten when I saw this:

Gah. All of the beauty.

Confession: I've never done a triathlon as a relay before. The way this one worked involved standing in a holding corral and waiting for your teammate to finish and bring you the timing chip.

Of course, we had to turn standing and waiting into ridiculousness.

We weren't goofing off for long, though, because Sara, the swimmer on my team, kicked ass.

Running in a bike helmet is weird.

Anyway, I killed that ride. I don't know how I managed to do it, but I rode 12 miles in 39:17, an 18.3 mph average. I was the first bike back in the relay transition area, and I ended up with the second-fastest bike split in my division. (Granted, this race was mostly first-timers or one-timers, and we were in the team division, but I am still really excited about my results. Hell, I may never sleep before a race again! OK, just kidding.)

This is some kind of happy dance.

Our team -- the Shirazers -- finished seventh overall, with a final time of 1:28:42. And our sister team -- Sweet Vino-dication (yes, we are dorks and named everything after wine) -- came in ninth. Not shabby at all!

The Shirazers and Sweet Vino-dication  

I also ran into some ladies from TN there too. Unlike me, they did all three legs. Also unlike me, they slept the night before. Damn overachievers.

This was my reward for the strong bike leg.

And then I went over to a friend's house to hang out but ended up falling asleep on her couch instead. They don't call me the queen of awkward for nothing.