The Good News:

On Saturday, I finally pulled the trigger and signed up for the Philadelphia Olympic Distance Triathlon to replace the cancelled DC Tri. I realized I needed to register ASAP when I was still telling friends that I was training for two tris, a sprint in May and an Oly in June. So after soaking in a little endurance sport motivation while marathon spectating, I hopped online and registered.

The Bad News:

Ever since then, I have been having the weirdest triathlon nightmares.

The dreams have nothing to do with running or swimming, they all relate right back to biking, my weakest of the three sports.

Apparently I'm so nervous about figuring out all the bike stuff for my tris it's started to seep into my subconscious.

Dream One: In one nightmare, I dreamed my bike got stolen. Not out of transition or anything, just from my friend's house. In the dream, I went from being super sad, to super pissed, to super panicked that I'd have to buy a new bike and get used to it before the race.

Dream Two: The next dream was a little more detailed. I dreamed I parked my bike in the lobby of my friend's apartment building while I ran upstairs to see her real quick. When I came back, my bike had been completely dismantled. The gears and the shifters and the pedals had been stolen. The rear tire was gone. It looked like my bike had been to the chop shop. All I was left with was the frame and the front tire.

The funny thing is, I'm not at all worried about the sprint race. It's a TriRock event, put on by Competitor group just like the Rock N Roll races, and I know they are very beginner friendly.

Philly just seems so intense. I've read tons of race reports about people picking up penalties on the bike, or people who swam on top of other people in the swim. (I have no problem with getting kicked and punched a bit in the swim. It happens. But if someone tries to swim over me, I will probably have a panic attack.)

It doesn't seem like a beginner friendly race and I'm worried I'm going to finish last, or accidentally break a rule and get a penalty or crash on one of the many hairpin turns on the bike course. I'm also worried that I'm going stand my newbie-ness is going to be ridiculously evident.

In More Good News:

I had an awesome ride on the trainer last night and I practiced some one-handed riding -- hand positioning mostly -- since I knew I couldn't fall over. As a result of the awesome ride, I didn't have a single bad triathlon dream last night.

Perhaps the answer to my bike nightmares is even more time in the saddle.

Update: Emily, who ran the marathon on Saturday, just informed me she had a dream about my tri last night. (Weird!) and in it I kicked butt and made a sweet video for the blog. I like her dreams much better than my own!