Without Fear, Go: A trial and a triathlon

Just wrapped up another busy weekend doing two of our favorite things for the last time outside for the season: agility and triathlon.

On Saturday, Django and Maebe and we had our first USDAA Agility trial, hosted by AWSOMM Agility.

The competition and the scheduling (having to juggle two different rings) was kind of intense and Maebe had to jump a huge height given how small she is. Django was signed up for 2 runs, Maebe, 7. Django had a nice Standard run. Wasn’t clean, but he and Angela and fun out there. Maebe and I were pitted against some of the best handlers in the nation for a few of our runs. We had fun and I was pleased with the majority of the handling, but we had a lot of knocked bars given this was the first time Maebe had to jump 22 inches in a trial (she normally jumps 16). About halfway through the day, we were all exhausted and decided to pack it in so that we could give the dogs a rest and focus on preparing for Sunday’s triathlon, the last of the season. We learned some lessons about how to pace ourselves in future trials (don’t sign up for everything), and only sign up for events in one ring so you don’t have to risk trying to memorize two courses simultaneously. Our “coach” was there and so we got great feedback as we ran. Many of our agility friends were in attendance, which was nice too.

Sunday morning, we headed out bright and early for the MI Triathlon & Duathlon State Championship at Stony Creek Metropark.

We were entered in the sprint, which involved a 500m swim, 20k bike, and 5k run. As an added treat, Angela’s father was there to cheer us on. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful venue, although the roads in the park were under construction, so we had to bike through an area open to traffic. Angela placed 4^th in her age group and I placed 8^th. We both ran our fastest run paces of the season.