Since Ironman 70.3 Austria I have had very good training in a place called Bad Reichenhall, Germanhy. I have been doing heavy training for ironman and am training through these half iron distance races using them as hard training days. It seems to be working as I feel my body getting fitter and stronger and my recovery is swifter. Again the field at this race was stacked with Caroline Steffen, Nicola Spirig (who is an ITU athlete who often bikes her way solo up to the next pack and who just took out the ITU Championship in Madrid against a strong field), Yvonne Van Vlerken, Erika Csomor, Anja Beranek (who just pipped me 2 weeks ago in Austria) and many other strong European girls. For me the goal was to get a good training day and get myself into top 6 and get a pay day for the effort.
My swim I was much happier with than 2 weeks ago. I believe I came out in 6th but apart from one girl miles ahead of the rest the others were just a few seconds in front, unfortunately my transition let me down again. So glad I don't do short distance racing as I just hate the mad rush in transition. So by the time I got on my bike the other girls were no where to be seen. Within meters of being on my bike the bumpy road knocked off the top of my aero drink bottle meaning that my drink spilt out everywhere meaning I would have to get more drink at each aid station to get enough because of spillage (I tried to stuff rubbish down the top to limit it as much as I could). I also lost my gel flask and it was very lucky this happened at this race and not 2 weeks ago as at Austria 70.3 there were no gels on the bike aid stations, but Swiss 70.3 yay there are powergels at the aid stations so no problem, just meant I had to keep slowing down to get them.
The bike course was a good one, about 900m of climbing over a half distance which is a fair amount and I much prefer climbing courses. I felt good on the bike, so much more comfortable and more relaxed than at the beginning of the year and my bike times are improving each time, on the right track!! I passed a few pro men but only caught 2 pro women. The course was wet and a bit slippery on the first lap so I took the descents a bit cautiously but it was nice to see that men didn't come past me on the descents like they used to. Second lap was difficult with so many people on the course and I felt it slowed me down somewhat but all the girls would have been in the same boat. The most frustrating was the last 10k on the flat with these men not passing quick enough and blocking the road, and as there were streams of people coming in the other direction I couldn't go over the centre line. So I decided I'm sick of being the good girl, always polite and I started yelling at people to hurry up and get out of my way. I would get past about 7 of them and then they would come back past and slow me down again. It was very frustrating and in the last 5 k I just decided to forget about it and just take it easy as it was far too dangerous with the amount of head on traffic.
I ended up with a 2.25 which I was stoked with as previous years results showed that a 2.30 was a good time. Caroline, Nicola and Anja all did 2.20, but considering how much Caroline biked faster than me in Melbourne this is a good improvement for me and my time compared to the other girls was good and no one else came past me.
Onto the run in 4th place I felt pretty heavy for the first 6 k. Then Brett told me to drop my bottle of drink I was carrying as he said it was stuffing up my run. I did and immediately felt better. In the first 5k I only made up 30 sec to Anja to be 5 min behind and again in the next 5k another 30sec, then all of a sudden 5k later I was down to just 2 min. I caught her with 1500m to go and made it into 3rd place. I was stoked and my run felt like I could keep going all day. I did a 4.19 making it another PB for the year by about 8 min.
I have another half distance at Challenge Kraichgau next week and again I will train through it with Ironman France at the end of this month. Can't wait to race the ironman distance again! Thanks heaps to my sponsors for their support. KSwiss, Powerbar, Ceepo, Rolf Prima and Blueseventy!!!
The best part of the day for me was being on the stage at the awards show and looking across to Benji who was waving at me and laughing wondering what his silly Mummy was doing prancing around on the stage!!
