OK, this thread is all about bragging, don’t like it? - stop reading here.
I did my first Oly today and my second triathlon ever, did a sprint last year. I’ve been preparing for this event for a full year and this is my big A race.
So I wake up this morning feeling like shit. I’ve had a minor cough all week and today it wasn’t gone and I also felt like I had a slight fever. Fuck. I wasn’t going to let this happen. I haven’t been sick or injured all year so my shape is great. Why now?
I try to ignore it.
I bycycle my way to the race, it’s held in our town and it’s this years swedish national cahmpionship for the olympic distance. That means that the best triathletes in Sweden will be there. Colting and Björling were there, Björn was there too with his P3C but he wasn’t in the race (“I’m better off training”).
Feeling like I did I had to lower my expectations and my plan was to go out hard and see for how long it would last, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t make it past 10K on the bike.
The swim was caotic for me in the beginning so I tried to stay out of the pack and on the side, this worked fine and I was able to relax more. Still felt it went pretty fast and sure enough when I exited I had a time like a minute better than my best pooltime so I thought that I was cooked allready. Had cramps in my legs too. Often get them while swimming.
T1 smooth. Tried to breath and recover a bit. Out on the bike my quads tightend up when I was putting on my shoes so my start was a bit wobbly.
All the time on the bike I was trying to not go too hard cause I kept thinking that soon I will hit the wall. It was also the first warm day of the year in this godforgotten country and I usually don’t handle heat well. But I seemed to do allright cause noone was really passing me and i passed a few.
Finished the bike which on my computer read 41,3K in a time that I couldn,t really believe cause it was 3 min faster than i ever done on training. How the hell am I supposed to run after this?
Now I was getting so close that I started fantasizing about making it the whole way. And i knew that I could run on 45min and still make it to my goaltime sub 2.10.
After 1k my legs started to cramp up again and I thought the end was near, but it got better and I managed to hold it together for a decent run.
When I crossed the finish line the winner was still standing there with a laurel wreath around his neck and I thought what the hell is he still doing here? Well, I was so dead tired that I didn’t really care.
My GF greeted me (the only person there who knew who I was) and told me how much ass I kicked. She claimed that there weren’t that many people ahead of me. OK I said. She don’t know I thought. I was super happy with my time though, 2.04.37 on a cough. But didn’t wanna speculate about which place I came in.
I turns out that I’m 8th!!! In the national championships. I can’t believe it. Where did I miss a loop? I still can’t believe it. I was only 2.5min behind Björling, hes some sort of world class triathlete. I started to train 2 years ago and not even 4 years ago I was smoking 15 cigarettes a day and hadn’t done any sporting since I was a child, I’m 28 now. I rock! period.
This says a lot about the tri scene in sweden, but still…
I just don’t know where to go next. Where will this end?
I’m high!
Thanks for the standing ovations!
Sincerly
Johan Gothenburg, Sweden
