Unbelievable!

Yesterdays race was unbelievable in so many ways!! First of all the day started off bad. Brian and I had a miss communication about what time I was going to be at his house. So he was still asleep when I arrived. It wasn't a big deal though we were at the race in plenty of time. Then stupid me froze my water bottles the night before, luckily they were ok by race time. Then I forgot my USAT card in the car once we got to the race. But once I was in the transition area everything settled down for a little while. That is until I got on the bike! First I dropped my chain because my gears were stuck, then the wind started blowing, then it started raining incredibly hard, along with the rain came lightning, then came two flat tires!! The wind was so strong I thought was going to be knocked off my bike. At some points I couldn't even see in front of me the rain was coming down so hard. Our stuff in the transition area was basically in a lake. I don't think I have ever been so dirty in my whole life. I had grease, mud, grass and everything else all over me! I didn't even put my hat on to go running, it had junk all in it. So my hair was everywhere, those pictures are going to be keepers! :) Thank goodness Brian handed me a pair of dry socks before I went out on the run.

Needless to say if you look at my bike time it looks like I had a 12.4 MPH pace, it took me 3 hours! My swim was really good though. I came in 1st in my age group and 10th out of all the women. On the bike I came in last! hahah.....It took me at least 40mins to replace my first tire and then I just rode on my 2nd flat for about 2 miles. I didn't have a 2nd spare and I knew the transition area wasn't too far away. I took my bike into the shop today and my rim is fine, they also said that my gears are just hard to shift and thats basically the way it's going to be. (I think they are just tired of me coming in every couple of weeks for the same problem! My thumbs just aren't strong enough :) ) I had a good run though. I kept a 9:01 pace. The total mileage of the race was 1.2 mile swim, 36 mile bike and 9.3 mile run. I was disappointed with my results on the bike but over all considering the circumstances I'm pretty excited about the results.
It can't get any worse than that!