Triathlon...

In 2009, sometime while we were training for the marathon, Amber and I were looking at doing some cross training and Amber found a little free introductory triathlon so we decided to try it out. It was held at Lake Natoma in Folsom, CA. It consisted of a short swim (200 or 400 yds, I can't remember), a 5 mile bike and a 1 mile run. It was a very humbling experience for me.
I had spent lots of time in the water as a child and teenager. Water skiing, surfing, body surfing, etc. at the beach. I thought I was a pretty good swimmer. I swam a mile when I was 15 or 16 in boy scouts. I thought this little swim would be no big deal. I learned I wasn't as good as I thought. Lake Natoma is below Folsom lake and is fed by water coming from the bottom of the Folsom dam so it is cold. It was probably around 56 or 57 degrees that day. Many of the people doing this triathlon had wetsuits but I didn't and didn't think I'd need one. Somewhere around 60 people started this race and less than 100 yards into the swim I realized I was dead last and not swimming well. I started doing the elementary backstroke, the breast stroke, the side stroke, doggy paddling (jk), whatever I could to just keep moving. There was a coach in a kayak that was following along. He kept asking, "Are you ok? Do you want to rest? You can hold onto the kayak." It was a very humbling (even a little humiliating) swim. I finish last by a long margin and knew I needed to learn to swim all over again.
Amber likes to tell people about how she finished ahead of me that day. Not only the swim. She swam so much faster that I couldn't even catch up on the bike and run. She still swims faster than I do but I've learned to swim a bit better since then.
After I chainsawed my leg I couldn't do anything for a while but one of the first things that I was able to do was to swim. I couldn't kick very hard but that is ok because in triathlon swimming you don't kick very hard anyway. The idea is to preserve your legs for the bike and run.
We began training with Total Body Fitness and took swim lessons as well as doing track workouts (later). Amber and I also volunteered at some of the races that TBF put on, earning ourselves credit toward race entries. Eventually we signed on as staff for TBF. This required us to committ to work a certain number of races in exhange for free training and racing. We love TBF and are going on our 3rd year working with them. So that is how we got started with triathlons.
We signed up to run our 1st Olympic distance triathlon (1.5k swim, 40k bike, 10k run) in October of 2010. It was in Nevada with a swim in Lake Mead, the bike from the lake up to Boulder City, NV and then the run around the streets of Boulder City. It was only 3 or 4 weeks after the St. George marathon but I thought I could recover enough. It proved to be tougher than I expected.
I lost my breakfast after +/-150 yds of the swim. The water was a little rough and I got hit in the face by a couple of waves as I tried to take breaths. I finished the swim just seconds ahead of Amber who started 10 minutes after I did.
The bike ride was pretty hilly with the last 6 miles climbing without a break. By the time I started the run I was past ready to be done. It may have been the slowest 10k I've ever run. I can't remember now but I think my overall finish time was around 4 hours.
Amber and I worked and raced with TBF throughout 2011. We did a couple more Olympic distance tris and in October of 2011 we did a non-TBF international distance tri near San Louis Obispo, CA. The international distance is very close to the Olympic distance. The swim and bike are slightly longer (1 mile swim vs .93 mi, and 26.1 mi., bike vs. 24.8). We continue to train for and participate in triathlons.