Sunday 22 July 2012

Olympic downer

This morning my tri club organised an Olympic distance event which was for members only and effectively a training event.  An ominous start with "white horse" galloping down the loch so for safety reasons the swim distance was reduced from 1.5 k to 1k.  We were all grateful as the waves smashed into your face and made breathing difficult.  A number of things went wrong in transition but these offer opportunities to learn (that's a positive spin!).  Unfortunately I missed the turn on the bike which added more than a mile onto my 25 mile course and the wind was a real challenge.  A cycling team passed me and suggested I join on the back which would have made it very easy but as I was in a race I couldn't accept their offer.  However I paced myself on them and stayed ahead of them for the 2 miles we were together.  My bike time was good with an average speed of 17mph which I was happy with especially in those conditions.  The run was murder with an undulating 10k course and the wind was a factor as well.
This event reminded me that I haven't been training enough and with 4 weeks to go to a half ironman, that's twice the distance, I have a lot of work to do as my result wasn't satisfactory and athletes I would normally beat were faster than me.  Part of that is down to when you peak in the season and for me that was 10 weeks ago due to Lanza Ironman which was my "A Race" for the season.  So a bit of a downer but lessons learned and a good bike time so it wasn't all negative.