Beware the Bear

I think you have to be somewhat nutty to get up at 5am-- and really nutty to do it on a Sunday morning. But that's what we did. The purpose: swim 750m, bike 17.7 (hilly) miles, and then run 3.4 miles. It was the Black Bear Triathlon in the Poconos, PA. I'll be honest, I had not been looking forward to this. I had not trained as much as I should have, and I was worried the water would be cold, and I don't have a wetsuit. Well, the water was cold, the bike was hella-hilly, and the run was a trail run where I had to stop mid-way and get some pebbles out of my shoe.
I waded into the water -- about knee deep -- prior to the start of the race and the water was OK temperature-wise. The swim portion was an in-water start, meaning we had to tread water by some buoys while we waited for the horn to blow. About 25 feet from the shore, as the water got deeper, it also got colder -- it felt 10-15 degrees colder. My feet were going numb! By the time I reached the first buoy, I was beginning to warm-up, but my feet were pretty cold for the entire swim portion. My hill attacks were better -- I'm improving at switching gears, but I did have to dismount twice and walk the bike up some long hills. It was quite funny, I'd bike past some of the walkers, huffing and puffing all the way to the top, only to have them pass me during the downhills or the straightaways. And then the next hill, the same thing would happen. The last two hills I finally learned my lesson!
Despite these challenges, it was a friendly crowd and I did finish. In fact, my swimming time improved a lot from last year's NorthEast Tri. The volunteers were great. And as soon as I crossed the finish line, i was handed a bottle of water and made my way to the food! (pizza, rita's ice, pretzels, oranges and more.) All in all, it was fun.

The best thing non-tri related was the rental car. We took a scenic drive up to Beltzville State Park (the location of the tri) and we stopped at Hershey's Farm Market for lunch. (Incidental, you can also pick up half a pig -- which according to their literature is 5lbs of bacon, 20 center cut pork chops, i country style ribs, 1 ham-cut or whole, 15lbs large link sausage, 1 pork loin end roast, and 1 rack spare ribs). They also had a great candy section and an assortment of Amish focused literature -- which was kind of strange. But it was there we notice the trunk of the car. On the inside of the trunk lid was a tab -- looked like a car air-freshener. If you looked closely, it was a glow in the dark tab with a person jumping out of the trunk! You guessed it. This car had a tab for if a person is "accidentally" locked in the trunk. You might ask how I'm certain of this? Well, I tested it out, of course, post-tri. I climbed into the trunk and had ML close the lid. I saw the glow in the dark tab, pulled it and voila.....the trunk popped open!. Here's ML trying it out!