Yes, it all culminates in this doesn’t it, multisport events. For me that is generally considered to be Duathlons, though this year I get to add Triathlon to the list as well.
Looking back at my goals for the year I see that I what I wanted to accomplish was pretty simple. Do better than last year. Well as this was only my second full year doing the Du’s that seemed to be a rather good goal.
My knee problems couldn’t have come at a worse time though. Du’s are early season events generally, as they happen when the open water is too cold for most. Still these are my favourite events and I wasn’t going to let a silly problem like a failing knee keep me down. No sir. So I entered all the events and competed. I didn’t train much as each event seemed to follow the next right away and I needed that weeks time to rest up my aches and pains before the next one. Ya know what? I did pretty good in most of them. My knee did mean that my final run was usually a bit of a let down, but my cycling improved over last year and my first run was pretty darn good.
In the end I managed a 1st place in age group for the Greenwood event (though sadly like last year with a small field), much higher placements than last year in all other events and a lot of new knowledge. I ended up 3rd in the final age group standing (35-40) but fell short of my goal of a top 3 overall. Seems there was a few new speed demons that partook in more of the events this year. That’s fine with me. Competition is a good thing. No sense placing well with no one to fight against. And that gives me a greater fire for next year.
Triathlons? Like I said these are a new thing to me as swimming is a recently introduced sport to me. Well I entered the Wolfville Tri Festival. Why this event? Simple, it was a pool swim and it didn’t conflict with my Duathlon events. Plus I also needed an event with a short swim. At this point I was still confined to the breaststroke.
So I did it and I really enjoyed it. I know what the heck I did wrong and what I did right and what I will need going into the future with triathlons. And I really see myself doing more next year, especially open water. Oh, by the way I managed 2nd overall at Wolville. If my swim wasn’t the second slowest time I might have actually won. It was fun though and a really great event.
A good year? Yeah, not bad. A few years back I was happy with 30 minute bike rides. Now I am not happy unless I feel like throwing up when I cross the finish line. Here’s to next year. I understand the Tri NS memberships for 2011 are available already. I guess I better get on that.
No comments:
Post a Comment