I'm nervous. Way back, several months ago, my sister-in-law asked me to do her a favor. She and her husband have been into doing these 5K runs and things like that for awhile now. Recently they've gotten into triathlons. Not sure why; maybe it's because they are both in their 30's now with two kids and are concerned about staying in shape. Maybe it's because my nineteen-year-old brother-in-law now lives near them, and he's pretty athletic, and this gives all of them something to do together. Maybe they like punishing themselves. Anyway, they've been training and doing little triathlons here and there in the St. Louis area, and they decided it would be fun to come down and visit and participate in the annual tri for the Memphis in May celebration. But my brother-in-law wanted to do the whole thing himself, and my sister-in-law and her husband wanted to do a relay team. Which meant they needed to talk either me or my husband into participating. I am the soft sell of the two of us, and I caved and said I'd do the swim. (*Note: I don't run. Ever. Even in sports when there is a ball involved, I merely jog. It isn't even a jog; my friend calls it a "wog"--half walk, half jog. People tell me if I were chased by a bear I'd run. Not true. If I were chased by a bear, I'd go fetal and hope it thought I was dead. No sense in running as fast as I can for as long as I can and then get mauled anyway.*) So I've worked on my swimming for the past few months. Not hard-core or anything, but since I've been working out to lose weight it's been easy to work swimming into the routine. I'm not particularly fast. Never was. But I shouldn't be the slowest person out there, either. Typically the swimming leg of the tri is the weak leg for most people. Don't know why they don't spend time working on it, but many triathletes spend the majority of their time working on the run and the bike. Anyway, I've haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it, since so far in the future and I've had so much else going on. But now, it's finally here. The whole family is in town to watch us make fools of ourselves. And the tri is tomorrow morning. And now that I'm thinking about it, I'm nervous. My sister-in-law keeps telling me I shouldn't worry about it and that we're just doing it for fun, but I can't help but think that she and her husband will be a little disappointed in me if I have a poor showing. I hate having the pressure of being on a relay because other people are relying on me to perform well. So I'm nervous. And the dumb thing is tomorrow, so now I'm faced with having to compete in a sporting event for the first time since my senior year of college. That was ten years ago, now that I think about it. Eek. So I'll let you know how it goes...