Old Pictures from my first triathlon
Back in 2003, after graduating from colllege, I went and got a taste of my first triathlon. It’s taken me 6 years to attempt another obviously, but it’s a big step above the sprint triathlon I did. I was going through some old CDs looking for some stuff because I bought a new laptop and came across these pictures from that first Tri. My most vivid memories from it include thinking “swimming sucks” while my out of shape, untrained self tries to swim along with the rest in the ocean just beyond the breakpoint of the waves. Luckily the waves were relatively small that day, otherwise it could have been interesting. My other most vivid memory is a of these two guys I met before the race. 
They were cross country runners from a university in Philadelphia, I think it might have been Drexel, but I’m not completely sure. They had never done a triathlon either and had actually borrowed bikes from people to come do this. I saw them struggling to fix a flat tire before the race. They didn’t have any of the tools to do it though. So I went over and offered to help. We only had a few minutes before the race started, so I popped off the tire, changed the tube and put the tire back on real quick and handed them the pump with enough time to say “115 psi should be good” as they announced 1 minute before the race starts. So the one guy with the flat stayed to finish putting the wheel back on and pumping it up and me and the other guy jogged over to the starting line. 
I end up finishing about 30 seconds behind that guy. I just wasn’t able to keep up with his 5k pace, but had formed enough of a lead on the bike to finish close to him. After the race they came back over to give me my pump back (yes, they didn’t even have a pump) and asked if I wanted to go grab some breakfast. They were shocked when they walked over and I was smoking a cigarette…. I guess that explains why it was also the ONLY tri I’ve ever done. 