Triathlon Joy!

Whoopee! We did it. The team of 5 triathlon ‘newbies’ triumphed on Sunday last  in Lichfield.  I think this picture captures some of our joy and relief.

We had to leave home by about 6.15 to be there in time to register and get our transition areas all set up. Then we began in the pool.

Here’s me with 10 seconds to go, unlike the bloke next to me, I am about to forget to set my watch! In the first length this will bother me as will the ankle strap with timing chip (”did I do it up tight enough?  will it come off?’) By lap 5 I will think I am drowning having lost my breathing rhythm totally due to going off too fast and by lap 12 of 16 I will be screaming ‘get me out of here’ in my head! In the end, even though it felt awful, I did about the same time I’d done in training.

Then we were off on our bikes – the  deluge of torrential rain that had been forecast  did not happen so we just had gusty winds to contend with especially on the return leg. Really wanted to do it in under 1 hr and managed 59 minutes!

Then off on the run. It was 4 laps round a field. Someone had given me ‘Pinocchio legs’ for the first two and I was really slow, then tried to pick up the pace and ended up with a run time just one minute over my previous PB.

Finished in 1 hour 46 minutes 22 seconds. Is this good??  No, not really but it’s not bad for a ‘nearly 50 first timer’! And my goal was to do it in under 2 hours so I was well happy.

JOY ‘I’ve finished!’:

Huge credit and thanks go to Keith and Helen who gave freely of their time and expertise to help train us. Also to Heather who inspired us all in the first place and continued to be an inspiration all the way through. Also to my beloved for getting out of bed ridiculously early on a Sunday morning, standing around and cheering, fetching and carrying and taking all the photos.

Also to everyone who sponsored me, when it all comes in we hope to have raised about £700 for The Ups of Downs a small local charity that provides speech and language therapy (amongst other things) for children with Down’s Syndrome.  Fabulous – real win/win all around, thank you so much  if you joined in that way. 

And if you’d like to join in and do one yourself… yes, I’m sure we’ll be doing it all again because it was just such fun.