Yesterday was the 5150 Bela Bela race. It’s a non drafting Olympic distance race. 1.5km swim, 40k bike and 10k ride.

There was a big build up to the race. The entire Troi club worked in the training hours together. Swimming, biking and running. We all became close as we shared the sweat and glories together.

Bela-bela would have been my first short triathlon and I was looking forward to gunning it a bit. The goal was also to sort out my swim and I spend lots of hours in the pool with the team and Tracy whipping our butts.

And it paid off. All my previous open water swims were a bit choppy and too much breaststroke oriented. I can do the mileage in crawl in a pool but out in the open it all changes. The pool sessions were good. Shorter distances, but much more continuous swimming and much less hanging around the edge for oxygen.

It was a wetsuit swim. I did a nice little warm up. I had to get the ice bricks from my feet and I had to get the heart rate down after the cold shock. The start was good and then the best happened. I got a nice rhythm, I got a nice pace. My sighting was good. I actually swam 1.54k which means I hit the course on track. I did a 25 min swim. Which I am really happy about. I swam crawl the entire time. Yay!!!!! I beat the open water shock and awe affect and I can now go out and just do it.

The bike was uneventful. A strong head wind and climb out of bela bela and nice down hill with wind pushing you to 70km/h on the way back and repeat.

I hit the T2 zone. Got a bit lost. Own fault for not scouting out the area properly before. But then my feet hit the ground running. My left foot started hurting on the front and top of the bridge. In good old words of Mo “motor through it and deal with it” I thought it would go away. That it only is a bit of transition issues. My form started to go off. I thought, pick up the pace and bite on your cheeks it will go away. After 3k the shuffle turned into walking. I still refused to give up. The course presented lots of opportunities for it, with loops were I could stop the race and shortcut back to base.

At 5k I decided to avoid any further damage and pain, I should rather pull out. A big mind game. I never had a DNF and it does not come easy to make the decision.

I did have a BT on the swim, although I was bummed about the DNF. I do see the positive. It was not my A race this season. This will be tri-rock. But my swim is awesome now and I loved it.

The atmosphere was also great with some of our team members hitting the top 10 in their age group. Well done Mo and Mike. Also Gill did her 1st tri, 1st brick and 1st 10k run. What a rock star. Dinner was served at the good old family restaurant called Spur and we did feel like a family.

So what is next. Ice, kineseo and maybe a doctor next week. Need to get the inflammation down. It looks like tendinitis in the foot. Hope it’s not chronic. I will have to back off the running for a few weeks. I hope it won’t have a negative affect on tri rock preparations. Will keep cardio up with biking and lots of swimming and do more gym work.

Fingers crossed that it will blow over quickly.