Got up at 5 this morning to see that we were gonna be in for some nasty weather, there just seemed to be one big band of rain heading West and it looked like Blenheim would not stand a chance of missing it.
Got to the Palace a lot earlier than I needed to which gave me a good hour or so to mill around the course and have a look at the transitions etc. Finally made my way down the trecherous slippy slope to the start of the Elite men at 10. Could not believe how many of there were though - I reckon there must have been less than 50 there. Still, I thougt that this would at least mean that the swim was not going to be as rough and tumble as I thought.
Finally started the swim and was amazed at how quick some of them went off - I secretly hoped that they'd made pacing errors and they would fall apart in a couple of minutes. Alas, they seemed to carry on at that speed Finally made it out the swim about half way down the pack I think...that run up the hill is a killer though isn't it?! T1 went really well as this was the first time I'd used the elastic bands for the shoes. Still, managed to pass a few on the bike leg and heard the announcer call that I was still in the top 10 places so was pretty chuffed with that. Got to T2 though and for love nor money, the runners would not go on...cue TV cameraman thinking this was worth filming. I am however quite confident it will not make it onto TV...I was swearing like a trooper at that point
The run was a nightmare...started off and my back and what I imagine are my kidneys were in complete agony. I was just about managing to run and deal with the pain - the legs funny enough did not feel too bad at that point but the pain in the back was jus a killer. Anyway, pain subsided towards the end and I reckon the second lap was a good 2/3 minutes quicker than the first. Finally got home in 1:12:10 (11:32, 3:07, 32:55, 1:27, 23:07)
No comments:
Post a Comment