Triathlon

On bank holiday Monday I completed a sprint triathlon which was 426 metres swim in an open air pool (heated) followed by a 21K cycle and then a 5K run. I had to be there at 6am and at 5.30am I was having a massive panic as my bike had a puncture so I had to borrow hubbie’s much larger bicycle. I’m not bad at swimming so I was starting at no.166 out of about 400 people but I also knew that I’d knocked about a minute off my time. Off I started, 15 seconds between each competitor but after about half a length I’d caught up with the guy in front, we’d been told that if we wanted to overtake to touch the foot of the person in front, but he was doing this weird kick (come on how hard is kicking with straight legs??) so I couldn’t catch his foot. Eventually one of the officials asked him to let me overtake him. Then onto the cycling, I wasn’t used to the gears so the chain came off as soon as I set off – ah big panic as I don’t know about bike stuff so had to ask a marshal on the course. I’m also not that fast at cycling and only had a mountain bike with everyone else having road bikes. Apparently these bikes are a lot faster, not sure how but I’ll use that as an excuse for being so slow. Lots of people overtook me but I quite enjoyed the cycling. Next was the running, as I have a  dodgy knee I did some running training but I couldn’t do long distances. I struggled but what was so lovely about this triathlon was that all the marshals looked up your race number and called out encouragement using your name. Very uplifting when you’re panting like a dog! I managed to complete the race in 1 hr 44 mins which I thought was good until I looked up my placing later that evening and I was in the bottom 50 (out of 400) which is disappointing.


I also felt terrible afterwards like I had a really bad hangover, very sick which was due to dehydration I didn’t drink enough water or fluids during the race and still felt dodgy the next day. But now planning my training for the next one, I’ve caught the triathlon bug.