Less than perfect day
Hey guys,
Well my Half Ironman in Canberra didn't exactly go perfectly. The first 500m of the swim I felt great, and was in the lead bunch (of women).. Then when we turned around the water was just so incredibly choppy and I wasn't having much luck going into the waves (for those who don't know me.. I'm not very big which doesn't help!!) Anyway I swallowed heaps of water which didn't taste great, but I guess thats just open water swimming for you!!
Anyway within the first 500m of the cycle I tried taking a gel.. and it came back up. I didn't have any luck over the next 90k to manage to take any gels OR sports drink, and had to stop 6 times on the bike to throw up.... not pretty. My poor bike was covered in sticky gels and it was on my tri bars so my arms stuck to it so everytime i lifted my arms up a layer of skin tore off...
Through the cycle I tried not to worry about it too much and just treat the race as a long training session. This wasn't a big race for me anyway and I tried to not let it get to me. Anyway I left T2 in 5th place and I magically managed to catch up on Elly Franks to take 4th. I was suprisingly close to the 3rd place which I can't really believe... 5 hours with absolutely NOTHING in the tank!! How'd I manage to finish?! Clearly there must be too much fat stored somewhere ... ;) The race was longer than a half, with an undulating cycle on a pretty windy day so times were particulalry slow.
I guess I can't complain with 4th pro female considering what happened. I'm just really frustrated and annoyed at the moment, and want to know what went wrong.. I've never had a problem with Gels in the past, so I'm thinking its maybe something I ate the day before. My dads bike time was 7 minutes faster than mine... and I have been able to break away from him whilst riding for the past couple of months even though I've had pretty limited training, so that just shows the effect it had on me.
Anyway I just wish I could race today. or tomorrow. or sometime really really soon because I just want to be able to show everyone what I can do! But unfortunately I've got a couple of months before I can get any more races in... Geelong 70.3 is next. But I'm incredibly motivated now, so maybe it was a good thing. Everything happens for a reason.. right?
If someone had told me this time last year that I would have been 4th pro female in a Half Ironman I wouldn't have believed them for a second. This really has been a fairytale year and this has been my only race in the past 12 months that I've been disappointed about - I guess I can't complain too much!
Thanks for reading, and once again thanks to my sponsors and supporters,
Char xx
'When you aim for perfection, you discover it's a moving target.”
