Lucky Last... !!

Oh my goodness 2nd Duathlon under our belt - last Sunday we left Masterton an an ungodly hour to head to Marton for the 9am registration for the duathlon. The drive up was COLD, bursts of rain and even hail while we were drinking a coffee waiting for the recreation centre office to open to register... though an angel was looking after us, and the rain stopped for the event however it was very cold and windy...

Yours truly trying to strap my feet like we saw on the internet to help with shin splints - I kept getting the tape totally tangled so ripped it all off in disgust and went without...

Sasha (Leigh's white bike) and my Grace - all lonered waiting for the rest of the mad competitors to arrive.

Starting to unload the car, trying to convince ourselves that it wasn't cold and that WE CAN DO IT !

Ohh baby, love the day-glow jacket (sis-in-law Leigh) before we took off...

We had entered the long distance event! We jogged/walked the 3km first section, then biked the 20km second section – that was hard work, uphill (by no means undulating like it said onthe course notes) and three very big long hills, awesome on the way back (downhill yeah!) but by then was knackered; then we walked the final section of 2km as my hamstrings were cold and had gone real tight, and Leighs knee was sore – we came in LUCKY LAST Leigh was 1 hr 37 min 11 sec – and I was 1 hr 37min 12 sec – no one was around bar the timekeeper!!

Even though a little deflated we were last – we are very proud of ourselves as we had worked out we would do it in 1hr 50min going on the times we do at home… next event is 14 June – so we are both going to up the anti on the running as this is holding us back big time and build up speed over distance rather than endurance over long distances – as that was the fastest we have biked 20km – it usually takes us 1 hour at a leisure pace… was a little body tired on Monday - though all in all the legs have faired well.

Hmm - me after the event, back inside the recreation centre - was feeling a little knaffed :)

Yeah sis we did it, we may have walked in last, though we did damn good.

You should have seen the other competitors in the long distance section we were in - they were lithe, lean bodies who had awesome road bikes that went whizzing by us... and had obviously entered more than a couple of events previously... we'll get there, and well keep having fun doing it!!