I did it!

It was weird, much more mental than physical which is what I'd imagined. I got in the pool, felt good, had eaten the proper amount, body felt pretty good (I taught the 5:45 bike class this morning and helped move tables, so I had been nervous that I would feel tired going in). I did my first lap, felt STRONG, you know, like you're really on your game, and then something happened. I panicked, or my breath got off-rhythm, I don't know, but I just felt so stupid. So, as I had reminded those in my bike class who were planning on doing the triathlon, I reminded myself that it didn't matter HOW I did it, I just had to swim six laps. So, I flipped over on my back, and backstroked, breathing like I was sprinting, but able to breathe better than doing the head turn thing in the water. Thank God I have a really strong backstroke to make up for the putzing around I did when I freaked out.
Of course, having panicked and not paying attention, I SLAMMED my head into the side of the pool at the end of that particular lap, which shook me, but I kept going on, backstoking, and finished faster than I'd timed myself the other day doing the crawl, so maybe it was good not to have been rigid and force myself to stay with the crawl.
Then the bike was fine, and although that's the thing that I worked the hardest on (my heart rate was in the stratosphere the whole time, which I've not done in a while), it was the most natural, and my time for 12. 4 miles was better than I'd planned for.
Then the run. I don't care that we've evolved into upright creatures, I still question running on these two legs. Running is so hard for me, and I'd been running on the treadmill for what seemed like forever, looked down, and I'd gone half a mile. How discouraging! So I took a towel, covered up the numbers on the screen, and counted songs on my MP3 player. Then I played games with myself, "I'll look at my distance when it's been five minutes on the wall clock," or "I'll look when this song ends." I had a general idea of how fast I'd be, because of the speed I'd set, but I didn't want to watch the seconds go by one by one by one. I knew I'd give up. About a mile in, my shins were miserable, I felt like my feet were flopping, and although I wasn't really breathing all that hard, I was getting really tired. But I kept playing games, blocks of time on the wall clock and counting songs, and when I permitted myself to look at the distance again, it was 2.9 miles! I only had 2 tenths of a mile to go, so I cranked up the speed and made it.
In the middle of this process, I was NOT having a good time, but I am so very glad I did it. Right now, I don't want to do another tri, but I have a feeling that I will after I get rested for this one. It is nice to push yourself sometimes. As I heard in a song this morning, you need to do one thing every day that SCARES YOU. I definitely did my "thing" today.