Triathlon

It's been one of my goals to do an Olympic distance triathlon for some time. 1.5km swim, 40km ride and 10km run.

Two years ago I was close. I had trained for months and booked into a tri which was a few hours out of Sydney, only two days before flying overseas to go travelling with Sarah for a year. I was all ready and keen to go, when a few days before I suddenly came down with one of the worst illnesses I've ever had. A raging fever for five full days, I was hallucinating, sweating, delirious, unable to properly sleep or eat and couldn't even get out of bed. The fever broke the day before the race but I was weak as a kitten and couldn't consider doing anything active. Then we flew out and the dream was over!

But finally I did it!!! I booked into the inaugural Cronulla Triathlon on 18 March 2007 and trained for a few months for it. And two days ago I did the thing, and loved it.

Sarah came out and cheered me on which made a huge difference to me, it was so nice to have her there. Here's the scene at the start line at 6.30am as first light hit the beach.



Me coming back from testing the water temperature



Ready to go on the start line. You'll notice that I'm basically the only guy in the field NOT wearing a wetsuit. At first I thought "They're all soft! The water's not that cold." but after later developments I realised it was probably a wise idea.



The start! Off for a 1.5km ocean swim.





The swim started tough but got better. It was a surf beach and there was a bit of swell and some big dumpy waves breaking at the beginning, plus serious currents and rips pulling everyone badly off course en route to the first buoy.

Then about halfway through the swim I felt a searing pain around the back of my neck... and then my arms, my waist, my legs... BLUEBOTTLES! Yep I got badly stung all over. I had it in my head that being stung so badly that my body might go into some sort of shock (I've seen it happen to people), but I seemed to be ok so I just kept going and actually was able to get into a good rhythm with my stroke. Here's me coming out, Sarah was there supporting which was a fantastic boost!





Transition went quickly and the afternoon before I had made the decision to try jumping on my bike with the shoes already attached to it and doing them up on the fly. My bike position was at the opposite end from the exit and trying to run a hundred metres in hard bike shoes is a nightmare, so I thought I'd do it in bare feet and leave the shoes clipped to the bike like the pro's do. Probably not the smartest thing to try it for the first time in a race, but it seemed to go pretty smoothly. Then it was a flat 40km ride.



Did the same coming off the bike, undid shoes and flew off in bare feet. Finally the run - the one part I'm good at! 10km on foot.





The run course was a bit of a nightmare actually. A whole bunch of steep hills, and the entire surface either badly broken asphalt, slippery gravel or deep soft sand! But it was the same course for everyone and I felt like I fared a lot better than most as I've done plenty of hill running, in fact the run felt great and I finished that leg 47th out of 350, with still enough energy to sprint the finish chute.



Ah I'd done it! I crossed the finish line in 2:20:44 coming 79th out of 350 people racing. I couldn't believe it and I was so happy to have even finished the damn thing, plus I felt like I'd done as well as I could have done with no mishaps and wasn't in much pain at all. Now I think I'm hooked! I'm already planning how to get my time down for the next one...

Me with my mate Dan from the Balmoral Triathlon Club.