I have been part of a triathlon training program with my local YMCA for three years now. The program started out with around 25 of us, broken into two "classes" when I joined and has now grown to a beginner class, two intermediate classes and an endurance class. Let me start by telling you that I have the most amazing coach and teammates in the whole wide world. You might think you have an awesome coach and great teammates, but I promise they will never in a million years come even CLOSE to what I've got! Unless you're one of my teammates, then you have more awesome teammates than me, because you have ME!
My coach is absolutely amazing. She knows exactly when to push you a little harder and exactly when to back off. She is incredibly upbeat and positive and not anywhere close to being annoying about it. She's ridiculously ripped but not steroid-ripped. She's supportive almost to a fault, but would never steer anyone wrong. You can tell that she loves what she does and that she genuinely cares. She also has a great husband and two adorable children, if she wasn't so amazing I'd hate her stinkin' guts. I genuinely wouldn't be shocked or surprised if one day I saw sun shining out her ass.
My teammates are also just as amazing. When I first joined the Y's training group, I was in my third year of triathlons but still painfully slow (I'll always be slow. I've come to terms with this and while I may be slow, I _always_ finish) and was very worried that I was going to be surrounded by a bunch of macho, hard-bodied athletes that didn't have time or patience for someone that still couldn't run a mile without wanting to give up on life. And I didn't so much "run" as "bounce, jiggle and flop". (while there's still a considerable amount of bouncing, jiggling and flopping going on, I've now progressed to something that is more easily recognizable as running) Not once have I ever felt like I didn't belong with my teammates. From day one, we've been a team. I'll give them high-fives in between sets in the pool, and they'll shout words of encouragement when they lap me on our runs. ...Or instead of encouragement, they'll smack my ass. And I'm totally ok with that. Any accomplishment of a teammate's feels like an accomplishment of my own. And every time I do something that I'm proud of, I tell my mom first and then my coach and teammates.
The support and encouragement has been a life-saver. Not to mention its really nice having a group of people that understands that getting up at the ass-crack of dawn to go for a 5 mile run actually _IS_ fun! Because if you're going to do something crazy, you might as well be surrounded by other crazies.
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