I wasn't last....

Though I got damn close!

Today was my first ever duathlon. I am a pretty good swimmer and usually come out of the water about a 3rd of the way down the field. I'm not however, a very fast runner, so I knew that starting with a run was not going to be a great thing for me.

But, the idea is to challenge myself this year, so a duathlon it was.

The run was in a part of the forest in Rotorua that was used for the Xterra run we did a few weeks ago. That run started with a nasty set of quite steep stairs. Well just for larks in this duathlon, they made us run up them there stairs 3 times!!!! Mean buggers!

Anyway, back to the race. It started at midday which was just odd in itself. We had a breakfast at 6am, then another at 9.30am before leaving home to drive an hour to Rotorua to the race.

First up was a 4.5kms run. I got spat straight out the end right from the start, and only had 1 person behind me. I managed to catch another lady as we entered T1, but she quickly rode away from me. My Coach, bless his cotton socks, had told me to catch the bunch and ride in the shelter. Well, there were 4 bikes left in transition when I got there, so today I was on me own!

The ride was a 2 lap out and back 28kms. The out was uphill, the back was downhill. NASTY. An about average ride later and I pulled into T2 quite bloody exhausted.

Onto the final 3km run and it was the first run off the bike I had done since March - it wasn't too bad except for those damn stairs. The lady that rode away from me on the bike crashed and burned on the run as I caught her in the last couple of hundred metres, and finished 3rd to last - WOOT WOOT. Good on me - pip an old girl at the post - I don't care that she looked 50years old, I beat her!!!!

I have to admit though that out on the bike course I had my usual negative dialogue going for a while - "god you're so slow", "man you are going to be sooo last", "catch that woman in blue", "I suck at cycling", "just pull out, you're pretty much last anyway".

Then I started telling myself off. No good Coach should quit because they are near the back. I persevered, had a good final run and finished. Yes, it was at the back of the field, but that field was FAST. It was the North Island Interclub Duathlon Championships afterall, so it was all on the line to go fast. Disk wheels, draft legal, team tactics and everything (knew I should have put my race tyres on).

My time of 2:12:00 was about what I was expecting, so what the heck. I achieved my goals and it felt good to go out and do something different. I have about 12weeks until my first half ironman, and it did prove to me that I need to focus some more on training. I have been feeling blah about it all, but I did enjoy racing again! That's what the training is all for at the end of the day - to race! So, onwards and upwards and bring on the triathlon season I say.