Count me in for the coffee thing lol!
If you really want to hurt your eyes, you can see the full ugly reality of my achievement over here:
At 42 seconds, you'll see two ladies chatting to each other on the right. That's me, in the blue top, chatting to a superwoman (yellow top) who had just done a 10km race the day before and thought, ah why the hell not just fit a little duathlon in on the same weekend! Gack!!!
At 52 seconds, you can see the same blue-topped woman (me) standing still while waiting for everyone else to get on with it. She then starts her little shuffle-jog in the dust of the disappearing rest of the pack, and is not seen again on any of the other videos.
Jokes aside, it's incredibly difficult for me to get over my massive ego and stick to this in spite of looking like a fool, puttering along right at the rear. At T1 mine was one of only two bikes left on the racks. At T2 just about everyone was inside already enjoying tea and sandwiches. Finish time the f***ing racks had already been dismantled and packed away. I found that horribly demoralising, though it really is just practical, and my bike had been treated very respectfully, put aside very neatly and my towel with stuff on also handled gently. The guys managing the race, doing the time chip thing, were very kind and sweet, I must say. Everyone was very encouraging, in spite of the gigantic gap between me and the rest of the universe it felt like lol!
Ah, you know what, screw it. I finished the race, I loved it, and the bit of ego crushing is good for me. I struggle against these wild fantasies of doing magnificently better in the next one, but I have to dismiss such idiotic notions as pushing myself hard will do no good. There are two things which I'm curious about
: in the first place, I was exhausted on that race day. I'd been overtraining, it seems, and standing on that start line, I honestly wondered if I could make it through the whole race (wowee, a whole 6km running and 17km cycling
) I'm taking things more sensibly now, while still gently adding to the load in my training programme every week. So I wonder if I'll do better if I'm feeling less run down and worn out. In the second place, no surprises as I think I keep going on and on about it, I should...
should have my road bike by the next race in the series.
I'm really curious to see what effect those two factors will have. The thing is, I was not collapse-point tired or much out of breath when I crossed the finish line. I did run a little faster near the end of the second run, but my throat closed up a little (I'd woken up with a bit of a head cold, I think it was that) so I had to return to normal pace. I really didn't push myself much at all. I'm not sure I want to: my ultimate aim is longer distances; endurance rather than speed. So I also want to be careful of falling into a trap of focusing on speed when really for my goals I should be focusing on endurance.
I also tend to go on and on and on and on when I write anything, be it emails or forum posts. Sorry, guys.