The wait of over a month since my last triathlon was finally over, I was meant to have a triathlon two weeks ago but I had to pull out because of illness. To make my weekend even better, I had exeat this weekend, which means I have no Saturday school, which is why I could do this triathlon today. After spending most of my Friday being excited for today, I also managed to squeeze in some time to eat some pasta! My mum was not amused at having to make me a different tea to everyone else, I had to be pretty persuasive that the pasta will make a difference and I need the carbs! After not a ridiculously early start for once, we left at 7:20. Of course we could only leave, once I had had my porridge. Once we had parked up I made my way to the registration, I wasn't quite anticipating the long walk but 20 minutes later, I got to the sign in. After accidentally saying I was in wave 3 and not wave 5 (meaning that the organisers were faffing about everywhere because they couldn't find my race number) I got my race pack. They also pointed me towards big cardboard boxes full of free-bee gels and water bottles, it was fair to say I was in my element. Anyway after all this I had to go and set my transition up, which did take a while as I was making sure everything was in the right order, to save me as much time as possible. Eventually I did make it down to the lake with my wetsuit on all ready. Wetsuits were optional but I decided to wear one anyway, and almost everyone was thinking the same thing too. As we waited and had our pre race briefing, I was starting to get pretty hot in my wetsuit and all I wanted to do was get in the water. Also a lovely woman came up to me and asked if I had a blog, and that she recognised me from instagram and that she was a keen reader of my blog. This was so lovely to hear! Luckily soon enough we were walking towards the water to get in, so I jumped in pretty quick, however I was not expecting the water to be quite so cold. I had also heard some horrible stories of the lake at Hever Castle and had been told not to touch the floor, as it is really slimmy. I managed to avoid touching the floor, thankfully but I couldn't avoid the fact that the water was so murky. Personally I don't really mind that I can't see anything, I do really enjoy open water swimming, even though lots of people definitely do not agree with my opinion on it. Soon enough the swim was off and I was thankful for this, as I was slowly getting hypothermia. I had got a good place on the start line so I tried my usual tac-tic of sprinting the first 100m, to try and avoid all the argy bargy. Thankfully this worked and I found myself with the few girls leading the swim. When we got to the far buoy I found myself in second but the woman in front was slowly getting away from me, so I tried to speed up and I caught up to her, so I decided to sit on her hip for the rest of the swim. I found myself coming out the swim in second, which I was pleased about. However my mum on the other hand wasn't expecting this, so her photos are a bit of a mess because she didn't expect me to come out of the water so near the front. It was a nice short 100m run up to transition, which gave me some time to get my wetsuit off and of course catch my breath too and get my legs working. My transition was a little slow but I was off on my bike just after the woman who came out the water first. There were lots of people leaving transition when I was, because all the waves were merging together at this point, which did help make it clearer to know where to go on the bike. After passing my swimming coach, who was volunteering at the event I made my way off out onto the course. The bike course went surprisingly quickly, considering this is the bit I least enjoy and always worry about the most. The fact that the event was so well marshalled made it so easy to know where I was going. I found myself getting overtaken on the down hills and I was overtaking them back up the hills. I think this is because I don't have much confidence going crazy quick on the downhills, so hopefully this is something I can improve on. As I came towards the transition area, I definitely thought I was meant to be dismounting 10m too early, which is why in this photo my legs are all over the place. After a quick drop off of my bike, I was off on the run course and my legs didn't feel that bad... okay not as bad as my last triathlon that is, they still felt like jelly. I have recently been doing lots of cycle then running training to try and get my legs used to getting off a bike and to start running. The run was all around the grounds of Hever which was so beautiful, however the first 1km was not pretty. This was just one long slog up a hill, not what my legs wanted. Once I made it to the top of this I started to pick up the pace and overtake people, which was a nice confidence boost. My last 200m I was pleased with because I could finish strong, even though my legs felt like logs by this point. The last 2km went surprisingly quickly, even though I kept looking out for the 3km sign but it never came, I was soon cheered on by the marshall saying, final sprint. Perhaps I just completely missed the '3km' sign. At the end I was offered a glass of coke and took it immediately as I had been told by so many people to drink coke after swimming in Hever Lake because otherwise you get sick. I then munched down my banana and then a mini soreen loaf, followed by a whole bottle of water.... oh and then some free water melon which was handed out, I also managed to get this all over me! Afterwards mum and I went for a walk around looking at all the stores, and I was keen to pop into the castle triathlon merchandise store and I came out with a finisher top! I then went to the timing tent, were I could print off my ticket with all my splits on. My final times were:
Swim (400m): 8:32 T1:1:38 Cycle (20km): 46:57 T2: 1:18 Run (4km): 18:57 Total: 1:17:22 It was called a super sprint but they didn't have the option of a sprint, so I went for this one, as it is only a bit shorter than a sprint. When I was looking at all the break downs afterwards, I saw that my swim was the second fastest overall, which I was really pleased with as my swim I have been working on a lot recently. However my bike time is in need of some improvement, compared to the rest of the top 10. I came 8th out of 346 women, and it is fair to say I am so chuffed with this result! The professional photographs aren't out yet, but when I get them, I will post them on twitter and instagram and add them onto this blog post. Love G x
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Recently I have been really struggling with getting time to spend on my blog because the truth is 6th form is pretty dam hard, and the IB (My exams I do at the end of upper sixth, where you study 7 subjects... 7? Yes 7 not 3 or 4 like A levels!) is pretty intense. I find myself struggling to squeeze in all my sports around my heavily overflowing homework diary! The perks of boarding though are fab because I am spending one less hour of my life travelling and that time is either spent getting some extra sleep or squeezing in that extra gym session or homework. The truth is, being an athlete, a blogger and a student all at once is pretty hard! Perhaps that is why I was ill last weekend and most of this week, but hopefully my body will soon get used to the new routine of boarding life and fitting my sport in too. However hard it is, I love it. The feeling I get during and after sport is just great and would never change it for a thing. At my school you can go home every weekend, which works well because if I have a triathlon I can come out of school for that and if I just need to get out of school and get some sleep (which ended up being my weekend last week, when I was trying to get better). The perks of coming home is definitely getting my bike back and being able to either go on a nice long bike ride or having a turbo session. As much as it is great having the big gym at school, where there are bikes which I use, there is always something nice about being on your own bike. I also have Saturday school so we often go to the club races and represent the school. Saturday school I don't really mind but when a small school fixture clashes with a more major club fixture, school often takes priority. Here is a quick snap of us last week at the Blackheath & Bromley relays, luckily I am feeling a lot better than I was in this photo and so I started sport again on Thursday and it was so good to be back running, swimming and cycling! I think I was going mad having 4 days doing nothing, I found myself with so much time on my hands. At the moment I am ready Mo Farah's autobiography but annoyingly I have been given a novel to read, which is due in in 2 weeks so at the moment all my reading is on this book , it is called station eleven. It is a pretty confusing book which I am just in a hurry to finish now so I can get back to reading Mo. I have had an okay week of training this week, not the best though because at the beginning of the week I was still recovering from being ill but I am definitely feeling better now, so next week should have a good solid week of training before another triathlon next Sunday.
Love G x I have had a really great training week back at school this week, including numerous swimming, cycling and running sessions. When it came to Friday, I started to feel a bit rough, I woke up with a blocked nose and had a sore throat, so I tried to relax and try and recover asap. Saturday morning came and well... I didn't feel great! Nonetheless I prepared for my race the same as normal but with a difference, because I was obviously at school. I walked into breakfast hoping there would be a bagel to accompany my porridge, but no there wasn't -_-. In the end I had my porridge with granola, then a waffle (instead of my bagel) with chocolate spread and then finished off with a hard boiled egg, just for a quick protein hit! Oh I forgot to mention the two actimels too ;) to sum it up school breakfast is pretty good! After we arrived, we all sort of went off in different directions because we were all starting at different times, because of depending on what leg we were running. I was third so I didn't start warming up until the first runner started. It was a 4x 4km course, the course was half around fields and then the other half was up in some woods, where there were some nasty hills. I did my usual warm up of about a 2km jog and then some drills like high knees, then to finish off I did some strides to wake my legs up to some speed. Soon enough I found myself on the change over line, waiting for Phoebe to run in. Sabrina had started the race off and did a great first leg, then Phoebe carried us through the second leg and by the time it came to me we were in the lead. This did put a lot of pressure on me because I had to make sure I kept us in a good position. I was on a mission, however the slight issue of me feeling like my wind pipe was slowly closing on me didn't fill me with much confidence, but I wanted to do my team proud and not let them down. The run started off nice and flat and then the climb up into the woods was the tough part. The run all together went pretty quickly but I didn't manage to quite hold my position, I got over taken by a Blackheath and Bromley girl, who came flying past me, so I tried holding onto her for a bit but soon realised this was not a sustainable pace for me so I quickly got back into my rhythm. The last 600m I tried to just push as much as I could because I could feel another runner coming up behind me, who was in fact a girl from Tonbridge AC (my club however I was competing for my school in this race), afterwards I found out she was actually a girl in my training group and who I am good friends with! After a fab 4th leg from Carlotta, we finished in third *whoop* We were pretty happy with this result as it was just the beginning of the season and we have lots more races to come. I was meant to have a triathlon tomorrow but I had to sadly withdraw this evening. I took a long time to decide whether to or not but in the end I didn't want to risk get even more ill and then risk missing some training and school work next week. I am spending tomorrow recuperating before I go back to school in the evening.
Love G x I have been asked by a lot of people lately about, what I do before a race and if I get nervous. To start with I have not been racing for long, however I do have my little routine before each race. I also don't normally get nervous, but I do tend to put pressure on myself, because I want to run my best, but I wouldn't say I get overly nervous that it affects my performance. Most of the time I have an early morning race, so my preparation starts the evening before. I will always foam roll each day, on the days up to a race, because I want to make sure my muscles are as loose as possible. I will also do some yoga and stretching the evening before. Training on the other hand is similar, but I don't carb load or anything because otherwise I would be eating pasta 24/7! Just before I start my running session, I'll stretch out for 10minutes and then I'll do my 2km light jog warm up. Then I'll do some drills for about 5 minutes, like high knees, bum kicks, high skips, walking on my heels, side steps, cross overs... it fair to say I go through lots of different drills, just to make sure I have all my muscles warmed up so I don't injure myself. I hope you have all found this helpful and interesting and I can always do one about what I do after a session or a race. I've also added a photo of my meal I had on the night before a race. CARBS CARBS CARBS, and some veg ;) Love G x |
HelloI'm Grace, a 18 year old runner, and fitness fanatic. Join me on my crazy journey through life, squeezing in an adventure in every second of spare time I have. Archives
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