This poster met me in Woolwich DLR a couple of days before Barcelona 70.3. It pretty much predicted how my race would go.
Rewind back a year, when (other members of) the Greenwich Tritons qualified for the Ironman tri club championship. Although we qualified last year, the race took part this year. I had originally planned to take a sabbatical from racing this year. However, redundancy and a bit of the good old Tritons peer pressure convinced me to enter.
The place booked, my body finally getting back to normal after Ironman Copenhagen, I started training again. Being unemployed meant I had a lot of time to train. I'd have coaching duties on a Thursday and get to the pool/gym three hours in advance so I could swim and go to the gym. I'd find the fast lane full of head up breastroke swimmers (or given to kids lessons) and the gym full of testosterone-fuelled males desperately to get a glance of their guns in the mirror!
When I finally got a job in March everything changed. No longer free to train when I wanted, I went back to work, train, sleep, repeat. I got up early to squeeze a swim in before work so I could also coach in the evening. I got home late and hungry countless times so I'm endlessly grateful to my lovely husband for feeding me!
My new job is very demanding and can be stressful (bear with me, this is important to the tale). As the time got closer to Barcelona, I discovered the cycling route was very hilly. This made me anxious because I have started to struggle getting out into the Kent countryside and I kept being dropped by my Tritons friends going uphill. The second concern was, what goes up must come down and if there's one thing I don't enjoy is going down steep descents. Especially when the phrase 'switchback'/hairpin bend is used. My final concern came when I saw the cut off points. How could I manage 21km/h when my usual speed round Kent was 18 ish? Yes there weren't traffic lights, but I knew I would struggle.
The anxiety built and along with the stress of work and trying to fit in training led to exhaustion. Our wedding anniversary celebrations involved me crashed out on the sofa after being broken by a long bike followed by a brick run on the end of a long week.
My trip to Barcelona finally arrived and I went out a day early deliberately so that I could see the city as I'd never been. I walked far further than I probably should have done. Friday involved building my bike, taking it out for a test spin, going to register and swimming in the slightly chilly Mediterranean sea. We went to the briefing where the talk of technical descents jangled my nerves even further. Garmin connect constantly told me I was experiencing high stress. Saturday was racking day, where you take your bike and everything else to transition and set up. I'd never had one transition before and I liked that. We then 'paraded' down the beach which seemed to end up with us walking about 500m waving our flags and then standing around before being sent back.
Sunday started with not much sleep (noisy outside revellers) and a total bag of nerves. I made my way down to breakfast ready to leave. It took a while for us all to get down to transition, sort bikes and get to the beach. I went into the water briefly to get acclimatized - still cold! More waiting anxiously while the pros started and the fast people went off. Then finally it was our time. Good luck everyone, beep beep beep... run into the water. There are a lot of people swimming with me despite the rolling start and it's a washing machine, a maelstrom of hands, arms, legs and bodies. People keep trying to swim across me, knock me so my watch stops and it's chaos. First turning point done I find some clear space and try to get into a rhythm. It works until more legs and bodies get in my way. The salt water tastes horrible and keeps being forced in my mouth by flailing arms. I notice several hats which have fallen off (they were the smallest caps you've ever seen). I get a bit fed up with swimming but finally the turnaround buoy comes along and now we're swimming into the very very bright sunshine. You can't even see the final buoy so I navigate by the intermediate buoys and hope that those in front are going the right way. Yippee there's the buoy, now to turn in and get out of this brawl. I'm out in 43 minutes, happy with that, now into transition.
Transition is a faff - I think next time I won't bother with a cycling top because it doesn't go on very well over wet skin. In the end it took about 6 minutes so I'm sure there's time there I could save.
Out onto the bike, here we go then. The first rolling hills were familiar after a quick spin on Thursday but then we turned inland. As we started to climb my legs just felt like they had nothing in them. The swim had tired me more than expected. I tried a shotblok, which seemed to help. Got to the first aid station, grabbed some water, carried on. The first climb started and it just seemed to go on and on. I looked at the distance and thought, this can't go on for much longer? My average speed started to decrease worryingly. I had to keep to 21 kph, but I was at 18. I shouted at the hill. Then I started to notice my saddle was slowly sinking. As bad as I am on hills, I'm even worse when my saddle is too low. With another 2km to the top I decided to pull over and fix it. Much better. Finally reaching the top, the pros were descending into the valley. They'd got round the majority of the course before me! I started to descend, this doesn't seem too bad, and caught a couple of cyclists up. I'm enjoying myself and powering on through. My average speed is poor and I think I will be cut off.
However, I wasn't prepared to be stopped at the first cut off point and told race over.
I look at my watch and see that I am 4 minutes over the cut off time. There are shocked and cross faces around me as others are stopped. As we're at the race intersection, I see James who's had a bad day with a couple of punctures and Duncan who was blue carded for drafting when he was overtaking. We wait for the coach, which I dub the 'coach of shame' to pick us up. As we're all still a bit wet we start to get cold so I move into the sunshine and cheer any Tritons I spot on the bike course. Eventually we get on the bus. I have a lot of time to think. I feel ashamed, embarrassed and a failure. I curse the hills, my overweight body and wonder whether I really should call myself a Triton or if my coach is going to want to continue with me after this. I wonder if I should come back to Barcelona again and beat the hills. I worry about Hamburg, the Ironman I'm doing in July, and whether I'll be able to do it. I am desperate for my phone, to tell everyone I'm still alive but it's in my white bag at the finish line. Which I'll never get to go through. I worry about the lady in front of me, who was coughing so badly that she coughed up blood and passed out while we were waiting. I worry about Lucy, who never came past me and one of the ladies stopped with me said she was being taken care of by a Spanish family somewhere down the hill. Most of my time was spent beating myself up and thinking what a waste of time, energy and money this whole thing was.
Looking back on it a day later, I am still disappointed. But I wonder if it was the stress, the mechanical, perhaps the zone 2 training which just encourages my body to go slow or a combination of factors. I would like to do another 70.3 before Hamburg so we'll see.
Sunday was not my day. I live to fight another day.
