Well, I have been using the term iron*girl under my name in e-mails for a while, but after Sunday, August 19, 2007 I can finally call myself an Iron Girl. I completed the 2007 Ryka Columbia Iron Girl Triathlon, along with 1600+ other women. It was a blast! I was familiar with much of the bike and run course as the Columbia Triathlon which I've done twice – an Olympic distance event – is held there in May every year. The swim was in the same lake, too, Centennial Lake. This was a sprint event and the distances were .62 mile swim, 17.5 mile bike, and 3.4 mile run.

For the swim, the water temperature was actually higher than the air temperature in the morning – the recorded lake temperature was 84 degrees! Quite comfortable and of course it was a non-wetsuit swim. The swim was fine, except for some weedy things in the water. Ugh. I again ended up with debris in my suit afterwards. I came running out of the water and Patrick got my picture...see the photo section, here. I was in a pretty decent location in the transition area. However, the grass must have recently been cut and they did not bag the clippings because I had crud all over my feet and it was a mess to clean up before putting on my socks and bike shoes. They handed out moist towels as you ran out of the water, so that helped. But it was not like I needed something else to delay me at T1!

Since they have mandatory bike racking the day before, I took advantage of being out there and I drove the bike course. The hills in Howard County are tough! I was glad I had driven the course because while some of the course is the same as the Columbia Triathlon, enough parts were different. There was one sharp left into a residential area that then went straight uphill. Thank goodness those hills eventually go back down. There were many Iron Girls out there on mountain bikes so I give them lots of credit for attempting this course with those heavy things...I should know – I did my first tri on a mountain bike, and the bike course was flat but windy and really hard! Anyway, it was so good to know the course because I at least knew how soon I’d be heading back to transition. Fortunately I had a much quicker T2!

The run seemed to be so much longer than 3.4 miles. Maybe it was the fun hills. And as with the Columbia Triathlon in May I had to walk up a few hills, which was a bummer.  However I managed to keep my overall pace under 10 minutes per mile. There were lots of friendly people at the water stops, too. You could hear the announcer at the finish the entire time and the music playing. That helped keep me moving. Due to my lack of training I was shooting to finish at around 2:15. My final time was 2:01:49.55, so I was happy. That time put me 74 out of 310 in the 40-44 age group. Overall I was 332 or 342 – depending on the results you read. The winning time was 1:21:07.10. Wow!

All the finishers received an awesome finishers medal and a cool Iron Girl visor! This was in addition to the cool water bottle and technical T-shirt that we received at packet pick-up. The 'funnest' part was personalized run numbers - everyone's race number had their first name imprinted on it. (See all the goodies in the photo link above.) It was pretty cool to be personally cheered for at times along the run!

This really was a great event - the Columbia Triathlon Association really puts on many awesome events, and this was my fourth overall. This event also helped lots of women - from the website, "Iron Girl's Mission: To provide a platform to enhance the experience of women who are part of a healthy, balanced and active lifestyle through premier events, quality products and services that reward and support that lifestyle." Iron Girl puts on a series of women's only events.

A final note: two of the gals from the 2007 July 4^th kickASTtri completed the Iron Girl triathlon as well – Jacki and Deana. Congrats to them both. This was Jacki’s first REAL triathlon. Way to go Iron Girls!!