The Finish Line

There are not many things I am properly proud of, so writing this one down feels a little odd. I did my first triathlon on Sunday and came away with the win in my age category, and I have read that back enough times now that it still has not really sunk in.

My last post was one long admission of how scared I was, going over how swimming had kept me out of this for years and how the fear of the unknown was the last thing left standing in my way. Triathlons have always been something I quietly assumed belonged to other people, and seeing my name sat near the top of a list has not caught up with the way I think of myself yet. I expect it will settle down soon enough, but currently I still keep wanting to put an asterisk next to the result.

The morning was the most wound up I have been in years, and that fear turned out to be precisely what I needed on the day. It kept my head fixed on the job in front of me, taking me through the transitions and the rules over and over. So that the race itself felt like something I had already done a dozen times. I have spent a long time trying to calm that fear down, and on the day it carried a good half of the load for me.

The swim went well for me, although the mass start was a scary thing to be in the middle of. I simply stopped for 10 seconds and lets everybody rush off, and caught some of them up again past half way. After transition 1, and I got on my bike, I could feel myself relax as I instantly felt more comfortable. I knew I needed to hold back so I didn’t punish my run too much. Some Brick workouts recently have left my legs broken for the first couple of kilometres, and I was not prepared to gamble on blowing up for the sake of a few places.

In the end, the run was pretty easy for me, and I crossed the line knowing I had at least another couple of minutes I could easily shave off in the future. Thankfully that takes nothing away from getting the job done and if I am honest, it sits with me more easily than the result does.

None of this takes anything away from how I ended that last post. Getting over the line was enough on its own, it was only ever going to be a beginning, and the Ironman sat somewhere down the road still scares the life out of me. I move forward again in three weeks to a longer Triathlon, and now I am really looking forward to it.