Shepparton Half Ironman

Well, the weekend of the 18th November had arrived! After months of training it was becoming a reality. The last 2 weeks we had been tapering, which means decreasing the long hours of training but still maintaining enough to not lose your fitness. It's a strange feeling, not being able to train as much as normal and I actually found I was so much hungrier, even though I was doing less exercise.

Saturday morning we had to register and put our bikes into the bike compound. Our bikes were easily the least expensive and sophisticated there amongst some that were worth $20,000. Then we went for a quick dip in the lake, that was literally so brown you could not even see your arms in it! Never swum in anything like that before! It wasn't that cold though, which was good.

Slept quite well Saturday night, always a bonus and woke up at 4am. Still calm, I managed to eat 3 Weetabix and a banana, giving it enough time to digest before the 7.10am start. Calm right till the off and the first 200m of the swim. Then when the next two waves of people came past, I lost it a bit and was seriously wondering what on earth I was doing, trying to survive amongst the 1,200 other swimmers. But once they had all passed me by and there was just a handful of other slow swimmers left, I got back into my rhythm, determined to finish. When I came out in 55 minutes (there was a one hour cut-off) I whooped for joy, as if I had finished the whole thing :)

The bike went according to plan, 90km (56 miles) in 3.5 hours. It was made up of 2 laps in an oblong, 2 sides I had the wind behind me and I was flying at 30km/hr but the other two were tough going struggling into the wind doing 20km/hr.

The run was made up of 3 laps of 7km and took longer than normal - 2:11 hrs but I managed to keep running the whole thing whilst others were walking. At the end of each lap you were given an Ironman wristband to show you had completed each lap and I still haven't taken them off! Finally, after 6:42hrs, I crossed the finish line, completely estatic and emotional! I came 853rd out of 1,200 entrants so very pleased with myself. And more to the point, felt great afterwards, a slight pull in my hammie but that was all. I have barely ached and today, 4 days later, have just run 10k. So all, in all, it was a very successful weekend and we are all still on a bit of a high from it :)