I’m a triathlete, whether I like it or not.

Eight weeks ago I couldn’t swim.

If I fell in a lake I wasn’t going to drown or anything, but I was definitely NOT “a swimmer.”

Eight weeks ago I wasn’t a cyclist.

I could ride my bike a couple of miles to the brewery near our house, but I’d huff and puff on the hills and deeply regret my choice the whole way.

Eight weeks ago I wasn’t a runner.

I was struggling like hell through the couch to 5k app, looking for some new way to force my body, which has seen 35 years and two kids, to start looking and acting like I want it to. But I was most definitely not a runner.

And yet, despite all of those caveats, as of yesterday I am a triathlete.

I crossed the finish line still standing, and an absurdly young volunteer (seriously, she was like thirteen years old) handed me a medal. So now there’s tangible proof that I swam half a mile, biked 17 miles, and “ran” (I use that word in the loosest possible way) 3.1 miles all in a couple of hours.

But even after eight weeks of training, 2+ hours of very hard work, a finisher medal, and my kids cheering me on with adorable posters, I didn’t feel like a triathlete.

Here’s the thing.

There were women there with six pack abs and legs of steel. Women with bikes that cost more than my computer. Women who could, quite literally, swim, bike, and run circles around me all day without soiling their perfect tri suits with so much as a dewey drop of perspiration.

There were athletes whose triathlons were twice as long as mine (I did a sprint distance, others did the full Olympic distance), and even a woman who was pushing someone in a trailer that passed me on the run while chatting casually about the even longer run she planned on doing the following day.

Meanwhile, I was struggling mightily to put one foot in front of the other and make it to the aid station where I could gulp down some water and walk without shame for a few steps.

In my mind, surrounded by high performers on all sides, my eight weeks of training didn’t make me worthy to be there. However much I had pushed and stretched for more distance, shorter time, and less pain with each workout, I felt far “less” than those women.

Then, as I waiting for other finishers with my friend who completed the Olympic distance event, we chatted about the race with some spectators. Feeling inferior, I made some sort of deprecating comment about my run being much shorter than hers, and yet I’d still had to walk part of it.

“Geez, will you stop diminishing?!” my friend (who completed an Ironman race earlier this year) blurted out.

I hadn’t realized it until that moment, but she was totally right.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I finished fifth in my age group on my first time out. Yet I was already finding fault with my performance.

I had already forgotten that I went from a complete and total novice to being one of the stronger swimmers in my wave.

Fact is I swam half a mile, and never had to stop and rest once. (Full disclosure: I did get punched in face by another swimmer and that made me stop, but it wasn’t a rest thing.)

I biked 17 miles in an hour and ten minutes on a hybrid bike, not a road bike, and loved every freakin’ minute of it — even the super nasty hill right at the end of the course. And I wasn’t even trying to get to a brewery.

There’s no denying I didn’t do well on the run. It was hard. Really, really hard. I have no idea what I could have done to make it any easier. But next time, I will do better.

And yes, there will be a next time.

Because as I swam and biked and ran for a very long time, and generally did things that I never, ever thought I’d do, a refrain started playing in my head.

“You are strong,” I told myself. “And strong people do things that are hard. That’s the only way they get stronger.”

(I also fantasized in great detail about the pint of Talenti butter pecan ice cream I purchased as a post-race reward, but that’s a post for another day.)

The point is, this race made me do things I didn’t want to do. I got into a cold pool to swim a stupid number of laps, and I hate being cold. I biked on a road with shoulder that’s like 2 inches wide that has a steep precipice on one side and cars driving 55 miles per hour on the other side, and I hate heights. I ran multiple consecutive miles. On purpose. Many times. And I once hated running.

Now, over two months after I hit the “submit” button and paid for this race in a bit of a foolhardy mood, I see things differently.

Hard things, I’ve come to realize, are not times to be endured doggedly while I yearn for their end. Hard things deserve my attention, because if they’re hard that means there are lessons there.

And easy things are not times to leisurely coast, basking in a relatively effortless moment. Easy things call for my preparation, because if it’s easy now, that means it’s going to get hard later and I’d better be ready for it.

And ready is what I will be.

This morning, a scant 24 hours after I started my first triathlon, I was awake, drinking coffee and Googling “triathlon off season program.” The run kicked me in the teeth yesterday, but next time I’m coming out swinging.

My next triathlon won’t include me putting sunscreen on my six pack abs before the swim. It won’t find me setting up a $2,400 bike in transition. But it will see me fitter, faster, and fiercer than I am today.

Because according to my medal and the conversation my kids have had with every human they’ve encountered in the last 24 hours, I won a triathlon this weekend.

I’m now a triathlete, and it’s about time I started acting like one.