Husky Race Report

“I’m confused! The math doesn’t add up.” During the run that was all that was going through my head. Where was everyone? Surely ok, I’m at the back, but shouldn’t they all be coming back out for their second lap of the run? But I’m too far ahead of myself so let’s go back to the beginning. 

I worked very hard to stay calm and not let the demons get to me pre-race. When I felt myself getting nervous, I breathed slow deep steady breaths until it passed. When I felt the overwhelming but familiar voice in my head saying “I don’t wanna….” I just thought about Kez being on course with me. Then she announced that she wanted to race with me. I tried hard to convince her not too, but she was hell bent on doing it with me, and now I’m glad she did.

We made transition with a comfortable relaxed pace and when everyone else was crammed trying to rack, we were already done. I went to the toilet and new I was in for a tough day. Nothing quite right there and a worrying sense of oh no… started, but I convinced myself that the ride would dehydrate me somewhat and I would deal with that later.

We made our way down to the tent and dropped our bags said hi to the ktc crew before heading to the water. It felt comforting to get in the water and do a warm up swim. Kez needed to check her goggles, new on race day always makes it a bit worrying. But she was good. We climbed out of the water and chatted with other ktc athletes doing the race. Before pretty soon it was our turn to get wet. Kez hung at the back end of the 40 and under group, and I moved forward to the 40+ group and in the end we entered the water together. She was gone by the first buoy. I tried to settle into my swim, find a rhythm. The first buoy took for ever to arrive and it was clear there was some undertow because I had to fight to swim up to the buoy and round it. From there you could feel the tide pushing you to the second buoy and another tough long rounding before heading to the third buoy. I had a couple of dark thoughts. It was interesting, I told myself they were little black clouds and to let them float on by. It worked. A couple of big guys swam close by, but other than that a pretty good swim. But I got tired towards the backend of the swim. Note to self, more long swims required in the river. 

I walked the long flight of stairs to transition. I fumbled for my zip which took forever to find and so it was a while before I could run. But run I did. Kez had been waiting in transition for me. Her swim a huge 10 mins quicker than mine. She ended up waiting 18mins for me. Yikes! 

It was so nice to see her waiting though. I quickly got changed and then we were walking out the the start line. We mounted and away. I was on the front. The plan she decided was for me to go in front and she would sit behind. In hindsight not a good idea. I worked hard more than I think I should have. But we did our 3 laps of husky backstreets and we stopped once each lap. The first time I was in so much pain where my undies line is. The rubbing on my legs from the kit was unbearable. I knew it was going to happen, so I had lathered Vaseline on my legs before hand but it didn’t work. I concocted a plan to rip the rigid tape off my knee and place over the rub marks. I stood with my hands down my crutch trying to attach the now wet and crumpled rigid tape to the top of my thigh it worked to relieve some of the rubbing. But I would pay for this decision badly later on. We carried on. We stopped two more times for quick stretches. We rolled through town each time to the cheers from jess and gaz and the ktc crew. I saw Coach out on course. He hollered at me as he screamed by. Nice to see him. When we finally rolled into town. I was pretty shattered. Now to run.

And then it all fell apart  I had nothing! Overbiking was a real issue and now I couldn’t break out of the jog/walk pattern and then the bowels decided to make a reappearance on the scene and while there was no real sense of urgency to visit the toilet, the cramp inside was real and with every step I could feel the downward pressure not fun. This led to frequent time in the toilet and a lot of walking. Eventually the cola and Powerade started to bring me back and a Panadol and a final trip to the loo made the cramp ease so that I could run again. From here I was so shattered it was hard to run still, but I feel like we did a negative split on the way home. With 2kms to go we were still laughing and singing and when we finally navigated the finish line, we finished with twin smiles and cheers to out little crowd waiting patiently for us.  

 

In Other News…..

Ok, so unexpectedly turned up for a body scan. I was pleasantly surprised this week when I started a radical and pretty harsh diet to lose some weight. The promise was up to a kilo or so. And I got the ..or so. So happy. But I know no calories can lead directly to impacting my performance. But at the end of the day, I didn’t go to badly with the training either..  I backed off the intensity on a couple of sessions knowing it would impact and I think it paid off.

So when kez and I dropped off a bike for service we skipped next door to get a body scan and to my absolute delight the scan repeated what I saw on the scales that morning. Some of the previous results saw my scores creeping into the ‘over’ category. So to see them back in the ‘normal’ range and to see reductions across all areas for measurements was a real motivation to keep on trucking the way I have been going.

Training has been good. Lots of solid sessions, getting it done and focusing on body, feel, and as I said, staying in the right range to not see too much residual fatigue building up. Sunday was a solid hit out with a ride with the ACC team. I was working hard, but not on the rivet 90kms done plus an 18km walk the day before saw both Kez and I getting it done and very happy. 

This week is again about focus on diet, lose weight rapidly and go easy on training without missing a sesh. However, it’s now Tuesday and we got out boosters so we decided to skip training tonight and rest.. we swam this morning and I got 3kms done so very happy and toodled along in my lane focusing on me. But! I had to check myself from comparing and judging and then giving myself a hard time. When am I going to learn? Anyway…….