3rd half iron distance race in 15 days, that was new territory! Actually I really enjoyed it. Out of the 3 that was my best. The first (Challenge Rimini) was the worst, the recovery from that one was hard, it really hurt. The second last week (Ironman Pays D'Aix) was much better, recovery was easier and now this one. I feel like nothing has happened, not really sore at all, although I could in no way go any faster, I knew that I could go that speed for a long time, and that is what I am ultimately training for. So I guess I am just a weird person, I seem to thrive on hard work. I wish I was one who could just do one race and nail it, it would be a hell of a lot easier, but I'm simply not. And if you are curious, how many massages did I have? Zero (can't afford it and not even post race free ones as I feel guilty when I haven't seen Benji all day. But I did have quite a bit of alkohol frei bier (good recovery drink!).
So the goal for this race was to scrape into the top 6 and get a bit of money. It costs us around 15k to travel to Europe, and my goal is to race 5 half ironman to cover these costs so that by the time I get to the Ironman (Frankfurt) I can hopefully (fingers crossed) go home with a profit. After today's race I am up to around $9500 so I have 2 more chances to hopefully meet that goal. I'm not arrogant. I in no way thought that I could turn up to today's race and go home with a win against girls with fresh legs training for one race, but I hoped that as I tend to get better with each race that I could scrape into that top 6 and what I did wildly exceeded my expectations. I am always being asked why do you race so much? And now I can say well actually I need to, racing makes me stronger and I hope that now I can go back, get in 3 weeks of good Ironman traning and this block of racing will help me with Ironman Frankfurt in July.
So to the race. I had a super swim. At the last minute I found out we were starting separately from the men which I was SO grateful for. We start with a dive off the pontoon and I always get intimidated by the men and pushed to the back. I guess I am short, 1.6m tall and weigh about 52kg and everyone towers over me and pushes me around. In Rimini I actually was told by the organizers to get to the back behind the 60-65 men. Of course I didn't. I tried to tell them I was fast and needed to go at the start. So it was a delight anyway to have an only women start. And lucky we did, we started passing pro men after 500m with a 2 minute delay??? What??? How crazy, and these would have been the men to push me to the back. I went to the front at around 300m and came out first lady and onto the bike.
I was glad to have a somewhat easier bike ride this time after the very challenging courses of Rimini and Pays D'Aix, Austria although with still quite a bit of climbing felt quite easy. We have a nice flat fast section for 22k and then a climb which went well and then a decent which was quite tricky and I did this very poorly as this is the site of my first and only (touch wood!) crash and I was just too utterly cautious. And then a nice flat. At about 45k Lisa Huetthaler caught me. If you don't know the history of this woman then I will just say that she is a former drug cheat with a history of controversy. I will say I have very little respect for her (or anyone else who has or does take drugs) and I will explain later. She seemed to slow down. I can't really say as I had lost my bike computer at 22k but it seemed too slow. I had the feeling she was intentionally doing this to try and get me penalised by hoping I would come too close?? Or maybe she was just taking a breather. I'm not really sure, but I was very careful to stay way back from her, and then passed her back as I knew there were some very speedy cyclists and runners coming from behind and I couldn't afford to be mucking around. She then passed me back. We then went through a kind of twisty area, although the road was quite wide and flat and she was cutting the course. This is a big no in my book. It is wrong. Crossing the centre line is a DQ in races (as far as I know, maybe Austria is different??) of course she did this when the cameras were not around. Not only is it just plain stupid when the opposite side of the road is still open for traffic but it's wrong and I didn't follow suit. So with every twist she could easily grab a metre and I lost hold of her. By the time we reached the climb she was about a minute up the road but I knew I could make time up the climb. Lisa is huge, I've never seen a triathlete so muscly and big, I doubted her ability to be a good climber, so I reeled her in by the top of the climb, but then we had about 30k of downhill and flat and she could use her weight to get away and put 2.5 mins into me by the end of the bike. But I had my best bike ride here and it was my 4th time racing and was pretty happy.
Into transition I was in 2nd but not for long. Svenja Bazlen was right behind me and then gained 30 seconds on me in T2 (oh dear!) So I was in third. The run hurt at the beginning. My calves were really screaming, but I pushed as hard as I could as I needed to, everyone at this race was a very accomplished runner. I love the run course. It is flat, the crowds are great and really push you along and this year the weather was perfect, not too hot and not too cold, just perfect running temperature. I felt like I ran really well and certainly finished with my best ever run time 1.21, of course like the rest of my races I felt best in the last 5k which is just too late, but good news for ironman maybe? But I slipped one place back during the run. Kaisa Lehtonen came past me at around 6k and she was running so fast. She ran a 1.16. Wow!! Gosh I am trying to run close to 1.20 but it seems the benchmark has changed. There used to be only a couple of women Rinnie, Kelly Williamson, Caitlin Snow who could run so fast but the last 2 races I have done you have had to run well under 1.20 to win.
So a solid showing for me and although I would have loved to have been on the podium, I have to just accept that I ran a great race by my own standards and it was only good enough for 4th place. Same as sometimes I have gotten away with a win and it hasn't really been a fine performance it is just part of the sport.
Now I have 3 weeks away from racing. Looking forward to getting in a good block of training in Bad Reichenhall, one of my favourite places in the world to train.