Walking on Sunshine

Nepean Triathlon, 2008.

16th October, 2008. A date to remember. Not only the date of tiger angel's longest tri yet, but the first time in many years (if ever) that everything came together just right. The weather was perfect (cool & overcast, but no wind), the training has been the most consistent it's been for years, and

she just blitzed it!!

I've never seen TA so calm heading into a race. All the normal indicators just weren't there. She ate well in the days before. She didn't sleep badly. (I won't detail some of the other normal nervous indicators, but they weren't there either :-) ). There were some concerns regarding recalcitrant joints and ligaments, but essentially it was all calm on the western front.

Calm, that is, until she unleashed the storm. Because of the way Nepean is run with the girls starting ahead of the first men (by the difference in time between the leading man and woman from the previous year) plus my age group starting in the last wave, TA was already on the bike before I even got in the water. As she flew past, she called out "19:30" and I let out such a war whoop that the fellow next to me suggested that I save my energy for the race! (TA was expecting something like 24 minutes, and that 19:30 is by far her fastest 1k yet).

When our wave was finally released, I meandered my way down the course; my patented navigation method of watching the shoreline suffering a fatal flaw called "lack of concentration". Every once in a while I'd remember to look for the shore, only to find it either disappearing in the distance or approaching with extreme rapidity, neither of which were the desired outcome. Note to self. Next year, let's try to switch the brain on before the bike leg.

Transition went really smoothly, and on the bike I managed to catch tiger angel just as we were coming back into the regatta centre. Sadly (for me), I was only on my first lap where as she was finishing her last. Her average speed on the bike was 28.7, again way ahead of expected. I felt really good on the bike this year, so I was surprised to find that I only made a marginal improvement on last year's time. Still, I managed to move up about 80 positions (out of 600) , which only goes to show just how far behind I was after the swim :-)

The run leg was always going to be fun. I passed tiger angel (again!) near the start of my first (her second) lap, chatting away with some new best friend. (How can you compete in your longest ever tri and do better than best-possible times, and still manage to meet someone and discover that they're good friends of your sister-in-law?? It's a skill that never ceases to amaze me). From there, I just set to the task of hunting down anyone with "M49" on their calf and enjoying being able to run again. A 43:29 run moved me up another 130-odd positions - did I mention that I like the run leg? - and I caught my last victim about 250m from the finish.

I ended up taking about 7 minutes off last year's time, but was much more excited about tiger angel's 2:26:38 - her ecstatic goal was 2:35:00! She is now securely anchored by a short string to stop her floating away... :-)

I'm walking on sunshine, oh oh,
I'm walking on sunshine, oh oh,
I'm walking on sunshine, oh oh,
and don't it feel GOOD!

Gnome

A good weekend all round

Now that was a nice weekend for the tiger angel / gnome household. I ran the last of the Striders' 10k series for the year, while TA had her first club triathlon out at Penriff (at 500m/20k/5k, a nice lead in to the Nepean Tri in two weeks time). Yep, TA has finally gone and joined a tri club after all these years :-)

I felt pretty good about the 10k on Saturday morning; not expecting a pb (not on those hills), but hoping to get within a bull's bellow of it. Hey presto, that's exactly what I did, running 41:10 - a 40 sec course pb and only 12 sec away from my previously-unassailable North Head pb. Cool!

Tiger angel, on the other hand, felt much more nervous about her return to tris, but then it just wouldn't be my beloved without a few pre-race nerves :-). As ever, she had nothing to be worried about, not only finishing minutes faster than the last one she did eight months ago, but improving in every discipline too. Transitions were slick; the legs were smooth; good times to continue...

I battled a flat battery in my camera to record as much of the event as possible. One photo was absolutely brilliant - perfectly composed, great angle, showing a powerful TA cresting a hill - except that it was carefully focussed on the trees in the distant background...

Ah well. This was the best I could manage.

Gnome