Do I really want to do this???

Saturday 19th May was my second attempt at qualifying for the Glasgow Triathlon European Championships, sprint distance.

I'd tried back in September 2017 and got a ranking of 109%. With 60 athletes trying to get 25 places, my odds weren't really that high. So I was approaching this race with caution, and not being an 'A' race, didn't put too much emphasis on the event. Being a sprint, its short and fast, and with a qualifying Olympic distance 'A' race in 2 weeks time, I was happy just to see how I fared in the field of something realistically out of my reach.

That didn't mean I didn't stress over it, nor have rubbish nights sleep the two days before, and a migrane aura the day before - all working against a half decent race. So I got up early, drove to Nottingham on the morning of the event, and arrived with a good 90 minutes spare to register and rack.

200 women went off at 10:15 for the 750m swim in the rowing lake. I can safely say I would much rather be ontop that lake than inside it! It was the most hideous triathlon swim I have ever done. I couldn't breathe or see, and was being elbowed, kicked, jostled and pushed for the first 500m. I had to do breastroke (something I haven't done for 10 years in a race) to get my breath back, and could feel myself moving further and further down the pack. At one point I was ready to roll on my back, put my hands up and give up the whole thing. I also thought 'if this is what the EU Champs is like, I don't want to be there'.

But I carried on, got some sort of rythmn in the last 200m and have never been so pleased to get out of the water!

Feeling despondent, I transitioned as quickly as I could and got on the bike. 4 laps of the lake, no drafting allowed, and lots of leap-frogging with similar-paced athletes. I managed a steady 34kph throughout. Happy with that, it's almost what I've done in time trials with no bends or corners. 35kph would have taken an extra 30s off my time, which I could probably save on transition somewhere!

Onto the run. I set off at 4:27 min/km. WAY faster than I could sustain. So I mentally gave myself a talking to, to slow it down and succeeded in speeding up for the next Km! Feeling good I maintained a 4:27 pace throughout, finally running the best 5k I've ever ran. Amazing.

So, despite a terrible start to the race, I ended up in 5th place in my age group, out of 28. This MAY get me a qualifying place as the lady in 2nd wasn't trying to qualify which means my position is 4th.... as far as I understand. But the dark art of BTF age group qualification eludes me, so I will have to await the official results from Triathlon England, and try not to get my hopes up!

Recovery from injury

Back in November 2017 I pulled a calf muscle in my left leg. It was mostly preventable at the time, because I did a long hard run, then immediately afterwards went on a 1 hour walk and a 1 hour walk/run with my beginner runners. I then did a brick session 2 days later.

Hindsight is a great thing but the journey I have gone through since then has shown that there was so much more to it than just over training.

I realised my calves had been tight for a year. A year of harder racing, and of new minimalist shoes. Not until I went to a physio, a running coach and podiatrist did I realise that 1) I needed to run better and 2) I needed to be more sensible with my shoe selection.

I took two months off running. That was tough. Whilst I could swim and bike and do S&C, I was mildly concerned that my running speed and efficiency would suffer and take a long time to return to pre-injury state. But I had my physio assessment which told me I was well balanced (some would disagree), strong and flexible and in essence, no reason for the injury to re-occur.

So I got back into running slowly - run/walks, building up slowly to 5k then 8 and then 10k. Hard runs were still hurting the calves and then the right calf started hurting.

Eventually I came to the realisation that perhaps the shoes were causing a problem. A trip to the podiatrist confirmed this, and that the 6mm drop in my lovely fast race shoes were not good for my feet which naturally have a higher heel than toe (not normal, apparently).

I'm pleased to say that back into running again, with tentative calves, my speed is as fast as before. in fact my duathlon this February was 1 min per 5k faster than last year. Very happy about that, and it goes to show that some time out of training doesn't cause too much harm in the

long run.

Pumping Marvellous

A couple of months ago, I walked up Snowdon with a charity called Pumping Marvellous, led by some ex-SAS and marines from Intrepid Adventures.

The aim was to raise awareness of patients with heart failure and several of the walkers that joined us did so because they had a friend or relative with heart failure. They wanted to experience the breathlessness that their loved ones experience on a daily basis just by going through their daily activities.

We were each given a heart rate monitor from 'MyZone' and once we had uploaded our personal details such as height and weight onto the App, it was able to track our activity during the day. The idea was that the charity would analyse our activity results at the end of the day and compare them to those of the heart failure patients.


At the end of the day my App told me I had burnt 2750kCal, walked 18k in 8:41hrs. My average Heartrate was 103 and maximum was 158bpm. MyZone allows one to compare workouts with friends and earn "MEPs" as part of that competition. Our guide swears by it and uses as daily as his main workout tracker. Certainly the belt was easy to wear and use, and if you're a competition soul, it could be the App of choice.

Snowdon was, as ever, wet and cold at top, the views were poor. It was still beautiful, atmospheric and green. We walked up the Watkins path which started steady and easy then in the last 400m of ascent, it became steeper and looser under foot. The steps became larger, causing the legs and lungs to work harder. That's when the heartrate would have hit the 158bpm maximum. For me, that is around 87% of my maximum, and not at all challenging. Running at 177bpm is possible for me, and regularly happens!