Knackered!

On Sunday 3 April 06, at approximately 0545, I had to drag myself out of bed, then kick Si out as well, as I had decided only 3 weeks ago to take part in a triathlon in Christchurch. Thanks Lauren! Note lack of make up!

So with a 0730 briefing at QEII Stadium, with another 350 ladies of different athletic builds and all shapes and sizes, I nervously prepared for my first triathlon. I was about to undertake a 400m swim, 12 Km bike ride, followed by a 4.2 km run, with sod all training apart from a couple of runs, swims and cycles.

So with my friend Lauren, Miriam (another friend of a friend) and with Simon and Lauren's husband Morrie supporting us on from the poolside, at approximately 0840 I hit the pool running, well swimming.

The swim was not to bad, must improve on my technique though as could not quite do the front crawl all the way. Then to run out of the pool, hit the transition area and quickly get my trainers on, dry off, hat on and get on my mountain bike (cannot quite afford a gucci road bike yet), to cycle from QEII towards the beach at New Brighton and back again. Lauren then caught me up and we then started to 'draft' with another lady to complete the cycle part.

Once finished, the hardest part ever, was jumping off the bike and then trying to run - muscles that had just been used to cycling had to switch on running and it was not easy and took about 10 minutes to get into the running thing. But I did not stop, passed lots of people, had a few hard core triathletes over take me, but that was not too bad.

So with a final sprint, I finished my frist active women triathlon, first one back out of our group of three, first triathlon ever, first one in NZ, with a position of 97 out of 350 and a time of 1hr 4 minutes.

A quick change, then off to one of the cafe's in town for a well deserved breakfast - all this achieved before 11am on a bright Sunday morning.

Yes I am hooked and will be looking forward to proper training for the next season which starts again in November, not quite ultra athlete/Ironman standard, but a start!