I always believed that in order to do well in triathlon, I needed to take at least 5 minutes off my (1.5k) swim time..... People told me that it would be "difficult", and that "it could take years" to achieve it. But apparently nothing is impossible - I took more than 5 minutes off my swim time from my last race in November, to take my first ever Ironman 70.3 trophy! Wheeee! :D
But where did the story leave off the last time? With a new Ironman 70.3 PB under my belt, 2011 started with a bang, some snow.... and some unplanned injuries! Minor niggles (foot, ankle, calf) prevented me from much hard running training, and before I knew it, April and the Paris marathon rolled around...
Stine and I signed up for this ages ago, but I forgot to ask Mr Coach what he thought! Turns out that running a marathon a month before a big half Ironman race was a bad idea, so I did part of the run "for fun". I ran a fun 25.5k in under 2 hours, and then stopped to be a spectator!
Also worth mentioning is that I did manage to get my first multisport race for 2011 in the weekend before Paris! I completed the Jels duathlon with much grumbling and discontent, as I battled the wind and the "Danish hills" to take the place of 2nd woman overall and 2nd in my category. Someone took a funky picture of me at this race!!
April turned to May, and my parents arrived for their visit to Denmark. Then it was off to Majorca for my first half Ironman of 2011. With only one long training week of just under 14 hours in 2011 when most of my friends had been doing 15-20 hours per week for months, I was full of trepidation. Could I really do a half Ironman with the training I had done? Had I trained too little / too much / too hard?!
Apparently not!! Triathletes like to write "race reports" which goes to the nth degree of detail. As a policy I don't do that on my blog and this will be no exception. So to cut a long story short....
The swim was in the sea, where the water was pleasantly cool and clear, off a beautiful beach in the bay of Alcudia.
I thought I had blown the swim since the 2nd half was getting slower and slower, so imagine my surprise when I clocked 31:55 instead of my expected 40 minutes!!
The bike was a hilly course, and many people came past me, including a handful of girls. But the course was 5k too short, and I landed in Transition 2, stuck in my shoes!
On to the run, my best discipline, and it was a matter of running the girls down, one by one.
I started too fast, and started to hurt at the halfway mark. I wanted to slow down, but I could hear the voice of my coach calling me an "amateur" if I did. So I pressed on. At the final 500m, II spied a woman ahead of me, about to finish too.
Somewhere deep in me I found the "final gear", and overtook her with a flying 15+km/h sprint down the finish chute! My parents were waiting for me at the finish, and handed me my Malaysian flag for the final sprint...
It was so so cool. I knew I had done well, but I had no idea how well! "Top 10 woman" according to Alex after, and "3rd or 4th in your category". Wow, that is so cool!!
So I did it! 3rd in my category, 8th woman age grouper. 3rd fastest woman age grouper run for the day. All thanks to the new training regime of Mr Coach. Whoa! It was a good day for the lone Malaysian competitor....
Next up, Challenge Roth, my first full distance Ironman!! :)
