First race of the year- Geelong 70.3

I'm sitting in an Internet cafe in Geelong town centre, it's called "KFC" and I'm surrounded by teenage punks!:)
I don't do KFC, so Kristian took one for the team and ate the chicken, so we got the Internet password- thank you Kristian!

So what happened today? I think I did 4:29, which if you look at that time in isolation is quite good. My goal was to think only of the swim and the bike. I knew with the strong field that if I didn't nail these then it would be all over. And I guess the fact that my legs had nothing for the run could be considered achieving this!

It's quite tricky coming to a race amid IM training. I wanted a good result- but not at the expense of my IM in 4 weeks time. So I was allowed a mini-taper, and I definitely felt well rested. I was also allowed to avoid Kristian's TP Therapy stand at the expo and the 43-degree heat for most of Saturday! Yes 43 degrees and a sand storm- the expo was a disaster! But we certainly can't complain, there have been bush fires all over the state this weekend with more than 100 lives lost and over 750 homes destroyed. It's so very sad, and hard to believe that people were experiencing absolute hell, running for their lives, just a few hundred kms away.

So I read this newsletter from Dan Kennedy(marketing guru and entrepreneur), on Friday. He has this quote on his office wall...

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up knowing, it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up knowing it must outwit and outrun (at least) the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you'd better start running.
It's very important in the circle of life to be a predator, not a food item on the menu. Predators are optimists. What do you call a pessimistic predator? – Hungry. Very hungry."

So my mantra for the day was "I am an optimistic Lion"! I decided I was a Lion not a gazelle since I race from behind:)

I'm happy that I swam as hard as I could; I think it was around 26/27 mins. I stopped my watch accidentally on the bike, so think it must have been low 2.30s. Which I think was quite all right. My legs didn't have the "zip" that I had hoped. I just think the accumulated tiredness and fatigue from training took its toll, I know I gave it my best. Onto the run I felt like my upper and lower body were all out of whack! My legs weren't keeping up with my arms:) The legs felt tight and I just didn't get into my usual rhythm. That was disappointing since I can usually rely on my run strength, even after a tough bike.

I haven't looked at the results yet, because I know it will only make me angry! There was a disgraceful amount of blatant drafting going on today. Instead of having a whinge here I'm going to have a chat to the race officials to see if there's something that can be done to improve the fairness of the women's Pro race.

Good news from New Zealand in my in box today- we get a 15-minute lead over the age group field at IM NZ. You don't know how happy this makes me.

Charlotte