The "oh sh!t" factor

Now back tracking a bit to way before my half marathon.. the story of how I ended up registering for my first triathlon in an attempt to eliminate the excuses... and finally get back on the road to fitness

As hard as it was I did ok sticking to my plan, a couple times a week I loaded the kids up in the jogger and went for a walk/run and I tried to get to a class at least once every two weeks.. but I was tired.. and guilty.. and I just had a hard time keeping my motivation levels where they needed to be. Sometimes I thought to myself who cares that I’m fat?? I am married and have two kids do I really need to care what I look like? So what if I have a closet FILLED with beautiful (expensive) clothes from express that I haven’t been able to wear in 3 years? So what if I won’t be able to shop at express (my all time favorite store) EVER AGAIN. It just didn’t seem like it was worth all the effort. It was something I struggled with for a bit.. the reality was I was ALWAYS an in shape person, I always ran.. even in middle school.. I was on the cross country team and still woke up early most days to run, high school I ran with the dog, and got into rugby, shoot I was in the freaking army for pete sake.. more then that I was a SAW gunner in Iraq, I carried over 100lbs of combat gear on my persons on convoys on a fairly consistent basis.. I even went to the gym and lifted weights.. and I didn’t lift weights like no girl are you kidding me?! I had 3 friends that took me to the gym with them, taught me how to lift, proper form, weights, rep etc. I wasn’t one of those pansies on those pully machines (not that we really had them over there) I was lifting for real.. I was doing bicep curls with 25lbs dumbbells.. with difficulty at first but then I started banging them out like it was nothing I came back home so ripped even my dad was like damn, I think you might be able to kick MY ass…I drove his point home by wrapping my arms around him and lifting his entire 240lb body off the ground a good 6 inches without much strain. Now here I was flabby arms flabby stomach chubby legs.. shoot I missed that wow factor.. I missed people looking at me and saying DAMN I do NOT want to mess with that… its just how I am.. I need that oh sh!t factor in my life.. what can I say I really should have been born a man!
Anyways… after realizing I needed that oh sh!t factor in my life I started thinking about how I could get that back.. and after catching an episode of scrubs where JD enters a triathlon in honor of his impending birthday bingo the light came on.. JLo aka Jennifer Lopez did a triathlon after she had her twins to help her get back in shape.. and completing a triathlon is most definitely in the oh sh!t category…because when it comes down to it how many people really do them? It would be easy(ish), I was a good swimmer in fact swimming is one of my all time favorites activities. I had been working on running again the only issue in my mind was the bike.. I used to bike a lot growing up but had I ever really biked 12 miles?
I started bouncing the idea around in my head for the next couple weeks…my husband and my bff both told me I was a little off my rocker and the reality was at this moment in time there was NO way I could run for 3 miles strait let alone run 3 miles after swimming for 750 meters and biking 12 miles..but I could if I worked at it.. and while I worked at it I would lose weight.. right?? Isn’t’ that how it works? You bust your butt and you lose weight? I started talking to my brother in law about it, I told him I was thinking of doing it and there were 2 coming up, one in July and one in October. I was thinking of doing the one in October because then I would have a lot of time to train and not look like a total idiot… He was like well why don’t you just do both, then you can do better the second time, then he asked me what exactly was involved. He was the epitome of fitness, he spend a lot of time in the garage lifting weights, jump roping and busting out on the elliptical… it was insane how much this kid worked out.. but hey when I was his age that’s where I was too
So he squinted his eyes as he was thinking and said” yeah that sounds alright I might do that with you” hmm well if he was going to do it I couldn’t really have him do it alone, and I had less of a reason to NOT do it. The next day at work I messaged him I asked him are you sure you want to do this? Really in July?? He was like yeah let’s do it up why not are you down? I was trying to find a million reasons why I shouldn’t do it.. come on me do a triathlon?? With a little less than 3 months to do it? I realized all I had was excuses..I finally just said f*&k it… why not…and just like that I was committed to doing a sprint triathlon…