Wellington College Triathlon

It was pouring with rain at 6am when I got up to travel to this event but luckily it got all of that out of its system by 8am. Transitions 1 and 2 were about half a mile apart so I had to leave my running shoes over the other side of the park and then sprint back in bare feet to get to the swim transition where I left my bike in time. Not fun and not clear from pre race information but we learn! Got to the swim with 3 minutes to spare but I was definitely warmed up!

The 750 metre swim was in an outdoor pool and I overtook about 15 people. This was not a good thing – there were a few close things with swimmers coming the other way but I enjoyed this stage.

The bike was three 5 mile circuits of a hilly course. It was tough and there were a lot of really fast cyclists out there but the sun was shining and I put everything into it. This did however mean my strongest stage – the run was going to be harder.

The run was mainly off road and my cross country running experience meant this came naturally to me even ducking through bushes on downhill stage. I overtook about 10 runners some of whom appeared to have given up and outsprinted another runner in the last 500 metres. That strong finish irritated me -it made me think there was more left in the engine but I felt some cramp in my knee before that sprint and was reasonably happy with my time for a hilly challenging 5k. I do think I could have done better but it was fairly good.

I was 78th overall out of 172 and 12th in my age category. Overall I was 58th on the swim 16.58, 80th on the bike 53.43 and 34th on the run 22.53. 1 hour 37 25 mins.