On Sept 12, 2010, I finished my first triathlon. It was a half ironman distance: 70.3 mi, 1.2 mi swim, 56.0mi bike, and 13.1 mi run. My final time was 7:24:23, over half an hour better than my 8 hour goal. It felt like an amazing accomplishment.

We had a fairly small team (6 people) who were doing the half ironman distance in Santa Cruz, the rest of our Team in Training group was in Washington DC, doing the Nation's Triathlon. We spend a good part of the weekend communicating back and forth with our bigger half, by the time we started our tri, some of them were already crossing the finish line across the US :). Everyone on our team finished, and together we raised over 60k for blood cancer research, with my "oh-my-gosh I can't believe I did it", 5k contribution.

The morning of the race was frigit, it was dark, I barely slept, the reality that I have a 7+ endurance event ahead of me was just starting to hit me but I put all the nerves in the back of my mind, instead concentrating on talking to the coach and thinking "one step at a time, one mile at a time". Our first team member to start was Damien, we all new he would be sipping Coronas by the time we starting running. When it was my turn to line up by the starting line, I felt nothing, and as soon as the gun went off, all I could think about was "don't try to win, try to finish, one stroke at a time."

I came out of the swin 20 minutes earlier than I predicted, small victory number one. Next I got to my bike, I new this would be the most physically challenging part of the race, at least I could walk during my run. The first 1/2 of the bike course was okay, I was thinking "if this is headwind, it's going back will be a breeze coming back" soon after, we had to dismount our bikes to walk over wet railroad tracks that took out quite few of the better competitors in the beginning of the race. As soon as I reached the turnaround, I realized it was tailwind all the way to the midpoint, and now I had to say hello to the real headwind. The next 2 hours felts like a struggle to not get off the bike, I kept my mind occupied by measuring progress mi by mi, thinking about eating food, eating food, drinking, and eventually I reached the transition area, 10 minutes before my estimated time.

I got off my bike without falling, which to me was another small victory, since I just started riding with clips 3 weeks ago. Of of my quads was filled with fluid and was cramping, I was slightly scared, but kept saying " you can walk this, don't need to run, your done with the hardest part". The run was rough physically until mile 4, and then I hit my stride, and the next 4 miles were awesome: I smiled, I cheered on my fellow TNT peers, and I went great, suddenly the pain came back and my mind started giving up, telling me that "I can make my time by walking, don't push yourself, just rest" and I ended up walking for about 15 minutes, and then the competitative spirit kicked in, I juggled running and walking for the next 3 miles, and at mile 11 my mind was completely focused on finishing the race as quickly as my body can go, and I no longer felt any pain until... I GOT TO THE FINISH LINE. I was so happy to see my boyfriend, as soon as I crossed, my body felt like all of the sudden I could no longer walk, stand or do anything except take in the accomplishment and what it meant, 4 months of hard work paid off.

The rest of weekend was food, drinks, and sleep, LOTS OF sleep. I'm so thankful to all my friends, my family, my coworkers, all the people who donated, and of course my teammate and coach. All the strength that I needed to get through this experience: 6 days of practice a week, 3 fundraisers, 7.5 epic hours, I got from everyone who supported me through this journey, in big and small ways. When I signed up for the bigger triahtlon distance and bigger fundraising goal, I did it to motivate myself and push myself but always assumed I would end up doing the shorter distance, I never thought I would go through with it, but I'm so happy I did!

The Team is now getting very close to race day. We did a looong practice on Saturday that involved almost the entire bike distance and half the run distance of my triathlon, so I feel much better about race day knowing that I can get through that much of it already. Yesterday was the first open water swim practice, it turned out a lot better than I anticipated, as the wetsuit kept me pretty buoyant. One of my biggest worries was around taking rest breaks without being able to touch the bottom, but with the wetsuit, it's pretty easy to tread water without using much energy. I ended up swimming about half my race distance and it felt really good, with my endurance mostly there, I'll work on my speed for the remainder of the month.

I'm also getting pretty close to my fundraising goal, 70% there! Huge thanks to all my friends who helped me out with my carwash on Sunday, not only did they bring in their cars, they also helped to wash their cars, helped me wash other cars and donated a lot towards my cause. With 3 weeks left of fundraising, I'm really excited about my next fundraiser which will be a wine tasting and dinner demostration. Ste Michelle Wine Estates is making a very generous donation of wine for the event, Jennifer Harris a personal chef is making dinner for everyone, and Mini Empire Bakery is donating desert for the event.

My manager at Microsoft recently made a generous donation towards my fundraising, and in return asked me to sticker my bike with "I ride for Hannah Grage", Hannah's a four year old girl who was recently diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL). ALL is the most common cancer in children 1 to 7 years old. The incidence of ALL among 1- to 4-year-old children is nearly eight times greater than the rate for young adults 20 to 24 years. She's now undergoing chemotheropy threatments which is even a harder treatment to get through for such a young person than for a full grown person, it reminds me how importnant our team's mission is and that the people who we are helping are very near and these diseases are very real.

Learn about Hannah's story: http://hannahgrage.blogspot.com/

Thank you all for your support!

Racing to Save Lives

7/18 Update:

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Huge thanks to everyone who's donated, I still have a ways to go for my goal, but feeling much better about being able to accomplish it by end of August.

I've recommitted to the Big Kahuna Triathlon, which is a half iron-man triathlon and slightly longer than what I originally planned for: we swim for about 1.2 miles, bike for 50+ and run a half marathon to finish it of. I decided for a longer distance because of the importance of truely putting myself up to a challenge in honor of all the cancer patients who fight a much tougher fight everyday.

Last week, I was able to bike about 46 mi, run 8 mi, and swim 1 mi on seperate days, in the coming week all the parts are going to start coming together, and we'll see how the training is really paying off when the miles of biking is followed by running, after swimming in open water.

I'm really excited and nervous about the upcoming challenges, but all the support I've gotten from my donors, friends and family is pushing me to continue on.

Thank you very much!

-Tatyana

(photo from Ice Climbing in a glacier over vacation, much easier on the heart after 6 weeks of endurance training, but still quite hard on the muscles, will probably incorporate more strength training in the next coming weeks :)

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Hi everyone,

Welcome to my Team In Training home page.

In May 2010, I started training for an Olympic triathlon and committed to raising about $4000 to help find a cure for blood cancers in the process.

It started when I decided to get in shape while training for an endurance event. In looking for a team to join, I remembered getting a post card a from the The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) Team In Training, which trains for endurance events while fundraising help cure leukemia, lymphoma and other blood cancers.

Having grown up in post-Chernobyl Ukraine, the reality of cancer and it's effect on people's lives is very real to me. Though my own family been blessed enough to avoid dealing directly with this deadly disease, not a month goes by that I don't hear of a friend or their family member or their friend's family member discovering that they have cancer and have to start a long fight for their life. I want to help them win.

Blood cancers are particularly scary because they cannot be easy removed with surgery and most of the time, require extensive chemotheory and radiation. All of us on Team In Training are raising funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma from taking more lives and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.

Jonelle Horn, our TEAM TNT Honored Teammate, discovered she had lymphoma in 2000 and with financial help from LLS was able to get the world-class treatment and has been in remission since 2001. She has been participating in Team in Training endurance events to continue to raise funds for LLS to help others survive their battle as well. I'm proud to join the Jonelle and the rest of the Washington Team in Training Tri team to train for an Olympic-size triathlon: 1.5k swim, 40k bike and 10k run, while fundraising to support the LLS's mission in finding a cure for blood cancers.

Please make a donation to support my participation in Team In Training and help advance LLS's mission.

I hope you will visit my web site often. Be sure to check back frequently to see my progress. Thanks for your support!

Big thanks to my parents who continually support me on this journey and my roommate Lian who's training for a half marathon in honor of her father who's also a survivor.