End of season race's

Ireland can be a great place, one minute its sun, the next its rain. The last two races i've done have reminded me of this more than ever.

K-Capital Round 2: Carrick Mountain
Second race of the WORC league was always going to be a biggie. Long course at 40km, but on the day we had to shut it down to 30km due to the weather...have a guess what....it was raining. But not just rain....torrents from the sky in the days leading up to the race. Was so worried that it was going to totally wash out the course.

Luckily it was not as bad, no the weather was still crap, but it was soaking. More to the point i wasn't actually racing i was sweeping. *sigh* long long day in the saddle on my own. Lost my water bottle 5km in, no water until about 12km. Add into that a race at the Bray Aquathon and a long run session the day before and my legs were shot. Felt so lonely for the whole ride until i caught the back markers. Saying that i enjoyed the day out, but it's made my mind up that i am not marshalling any more races this year.
Dublin City Triathlon
Week later and a week less training. Horrible week in work, stress, stress and more stress. 3 weeks before the main data collection for your PhD is NOT the time to try to do an A race. Once again i blame Xterra France for sucking SO BAD at getting themselves sorted. grrrrrrr. Anyway..

Great race as usual, cant fault the Piranha folks on this. Pure excellence. As normal not a hitch and the had transition sorted perfect for this one. Very little flow and the water was not smelling as bad as normal. Cold swim, but more or less uneventful bar nearly loosing a tooth when i got an elbow about 500m into the swim. Need to get FASTER to stay AHEAD of the pack. Left with a slight bitterness to the swim 00:30:15... wanted under 30. Welcome to the trend of the day.

Bike was good, aiming for a 1:10 split and did a 1:10:32, just outside again, i probably could have paced better, but the efforts were euqal on each lap, all the times within 30 seconds of each other, cant argue with that for 5 laps..

As for the run...wow...first 3km, felt great, hammered it, going to go under 2:3o, no issue, might might do a 2:20..then kaboom, legs toast, down to 5:20km's, shit shit shit, head fell out, and then it happened, pace dropped and couldnt do nowt, even had a bit of a walk....how sad is that.

2:32:ish

2 mins outside of my season goal. Result. Bitter. But.... im fitter, faster, lighter and more motivated than ever. The cross season is on the horizon and im looking forward to it. Life i good, i have a job, and relationship. Lets be honest. Its just a race.

For now