Triathlon number five is complete. I am officially five times as awesome, as I was before I started this triathlon thing.
Today went pretty well. Nothing went wrong, I didn't forget anything (yep, remembered the lip balm), and I think I did it either in close to the time I wanted or pretty much bang on. I may have even been under - we'll see tomorrow when the times are up.
I had a pretty good swim, apart from being kicked in the shoulder once and swum into. Pity the swim wave starts were so disorganised and chaotic. Instead of the nice cones and lane letter signs we had at Narrowneck, it was all a bit topsy turvy today. I got sick of the chaos and got into the water to wait out my wave start. I figured it was easier not to have to expend extra leg energy if I didn't have to. Getting into the water is awesome, and because I could only just hear the guy on the loudhailer, I had no racing heartbeat, no pre-start nerves and a nice relaxed swim start.
The swim itself was a bit gross. The bottom of the water there is pretty much mud, so I want to take like 15 showers to clean it all off. The water went from blue to brown and I couldn't see a thing in front of me, but my sighting and navigation is pretty good now so it wasn't a biggie. The trudge up the hill to transition was more problematic, I had to dodge beer bottle tops to avoid a repeat of Mission Bay and semi-dry grass isn't great to run on, especially with tree roots underneath it. Meh, again no biggie.
T1 today was pretty good and pretty fast for a change. Except for one minor issue - some woman sticking her bike so close to mine that I cut my leg on her pedal when trying to get my bike out of the rack. Damn those metal nasty cheap standard pedals! It's just a small chunk out of my leg, nothing major. I got out of transition running with my bike, in my bike shoes. I mounted without a kerb (hooray for judder bars [aka speed bumps]) and set off up the road.
The bike course was good. It was mostly flat, with a couple of minor rises requiring a couple of gear changes. On the way back towards transition it got pretty fast - on lap two, I was over 40kph and not even pushing a hard gear. I think my bike split will be good, after all, it was only 8km. My dismount was better than last week, but I still need more practice when there's no kerb to use to get off. Heck knows why, I dismount without drama in my driveway all the time. I did down my gel a bit late in the piece but it kicked in at the end of the run when I needed it. I should have had it straight after the swim but that's life.
T2 was fast - rack up, swap shoes, take off helmet, stick on run cap and go for it. I actually ran out of T2 and up the road a bit before doing intervals for almost the whole run. That's fine with me, it's something to work on in the off season when I have six months to improve my fitness, endurance and technique.
I made use of the water at the aid station, drank my grape mizone on the run and was well pleased to hear there was only 300m to go. I'd been tailing two ladies for about 1km and it was nice to pass them at the end of the run.
I don't know what my time was yet but I'm hoping for 1hr 10mins or under. I might be out by a minute or so but I don't think I would have gone over.
At prizegiving, I won a new "winter" 2XU cap. Nice! It will go well with my race belt, run cap, socks, shirts, swim caps, compression socks and whatever else I acquire. I wasn't feeling lucky (punk) but I won something anyway so that was cool.
So, post race analysis will have to wait as I need a nap, and there's triathlon on TV at 4pm. I've had my post-race treat (Hell Pizza, mmmm), done my house chores for the week (my arms are complaining after mopping and vacuuming) and now it must be time to laze around the house for a while. Later it's spa time, then it's stretching time, dinner time, nice long soak in the bath time, followed by bedtime!
Ciao :-)
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