The idea for my wife to do a triathlon first came from my Sister. She did the SunSmart Women's Triathlon a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it and so she asked my wife and my other sister whether the wanted to give it a go this year. My other sister unfortunately wasn't able to this year, but Shelley my wife decided to give it a crack.
I can't write as to why my wife decided to give this particular event a crack, that is a question for her to answer. However, I do know that with both our kids being in school, she has suddenly had much more time. Plus, I know she has been keen to get back to regular exercise for a while. I also know she was eager to use some of her extra time to get back into cycling. So perhaps it was a mixture of those factors. We also know from my sister's experience that the Women's Tri is a great event, high on encouragement and as low as possible on intimidatingness (which is a word now). So it may have been a case of the right event at the right time. Whatever her reason though, she said yes to the event and got on with training.
And train she did. We weren't sure how to get her started. Obviously I know a fair bit about triathlon, but I wasn't sure how to start somebody from no training, into training. Luckily for us a bit of Googling found a great 8 week beginner training program on Courtney Atkinson's website. It looked like a great place to start, achievable, not that daunting and sufficient to get her across the line. It ended up being exactly that.
At the start of the program she could barely swim 50m, or run 1km. But she refused to be daunted, persevered and improved. It was great to watch and just re-iterated to me that whether you are a beginner or a pro, the recipe for success is exactly the same. Have a goal, get a plan, commit to the plan and execute it. Simple as that.
After a couple of months of training, it was obvious that she was going to be able to get through the event. With that confidence she entered her first triathlon. She chose the short course event as it seemed the best fit to her abilities, the mini tri was going to be too short and the sprint distance was going to be a bit far. The short course with the 300m swim, 7km ride and 3km run was just spot on though. Perfect.
So with the training done and the entry in, it was time to actually do a triathlon race.
The race was held up at a spot called Whitfords Beach, which is in the north of Perth. I haven't race there myself, but it is a common location for a lot of the local sprint distance events. There is good water, controllable roads and great running paths. One of those spots that seems custom made for triathlon.
Weather race morning was just a little this side of perfect. A bit grey but not raining, cool but not cold, not much wind etc. Spot on.
Shell had been pretty calm in the lead up. She might not have done a triathlon before, but she has been around one or two and so she knew what to expect. In fact I would say she probably knew more about the intricacies of triathlon than the majority of the field. That helped keep her calm as she knew what she needed to do and how she was going to do it. In a transition area full of women who were quietly freaking out, she was a veritable island of calm.
There were still a few nerves though. We had a bit of a nervous conversation in bed the night before about the swim and where she should locate herself at the start to avoid getting to knocked about. Heading down to the race course though and setting up transition she was the picture of calm and professional. She had seen all this before.
After Transition was all set up it was time to head down to the beach, get a bit of a briefing on the swim course and then get ready to go.
Shelley was the last wave and so there was a bit of waiting around, but before we knew it, it was time to line up, the gun went off and away they went.
Talking to Shell it sounds like the swim went quite alright. Swimming is not Shell's strength and 300m continuous swimming is not yet a task to be sneezed at. As a result she took it pretty conservatively early, keeping her calm and finding her rhythm. Working her way steadily around the course. She had the disadvantage of being in the final wave, which meant that as she ran into T1 most of the bikes had already left. It was a little disheartening, but she had made it and that was the main thing. She had got through.
She absolutely smoked T1 though compared to the women who I had watched come in before her. Proper triathloning here.
Out on the bike and Shell had a chance to settle in and have fun. Riding is where her heart lies and once she was out on the bike being the last wave went from being a disadvantage to an advantage as she used all the people in front as motivation to push on. In fact she got through the bike so quickly that I nearly missed her coming back into T2 as I hadn't been expecting her for another few minutes. She may have been one of the last onto the bike, but she certainly wasn't the last off it. She even came into T2 with her feet bare and her shoes still clipped in, after doing a proper triathlon dismount, a skill we hadn't practiced at all in training. Skills.
Another smooth transition and she was out on the run. Like swimming, running is something that Shell is quite new too and so the plan was to take it conservatively and do it smart. If she got through the 3km run consistently, without having to walk, then it was going to be a success. And that is exactly what she did. The only stressed moments on the run were organiser induced rather than self inflicted. The run maps had said that the run would be two laps of 1500m, but once Shell was out on the course the turn around refused to turn up. She had a brief moment of anger (rather than panic) at the thought that they were going to make her run 4 or 5km (when she had trained for 3), but it became increasingly obvious that rather than two short laps the course was going to instead be one 3km one. A frustratingly simple error on the behalf of the organisers but one that would have caused unnecessary stress for the competitors. It also made us spectators wonder where on earth she had disappeared to. She soldiered on though and made it back and proudly down the finisher's chute and through the arch. A total time of about 57 minutes almost 10 minutes quicker than I was expecting. Awesome effort.
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| Those finish line feels |
It was also a bit awe inspiring too. It was a solid reminder to me that slower doesn't necessarily mean easier. At the end of the race my wife was running through her stats and told me that her average heart rate on the bike had been 170 bpm. That was the average!! Going into the race we had discussed pacing and keeping her intensity under control, so it was good to see that was completely ignored in a solid bout of white line fever. We might have to work on that. At the same time though I thought about how I would be feeling if I had been holding 170bpm for a 20 minute bike leg. The honest answer is I am not sure because I haven't done it. In my 'flat out' FTP tests I usually only have a heart rate of about 168 for 20 minutes. I would guess though that after holding 170bpm for the bike leg I would probably be feeling a lot of ground since I would be lying on it. I am not sure I would be feeling much running.
Stats like that put my wife's achievement in perspective for me. She had put herself in a completely different dimension to her comfort zone and got on and did the work anyway. In the process of doing the work she pushed herself harder than most seasoned triathlete would even think about. Thinking about it like that I couldn't be prouder of what she has achieved, and I hope she feels that way too.
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