road 2 irongirl: oakley pd duathlon

the so many things that could go wrong, probably did go wrong for me at my pd duathlon race.

1. we headed to mcd, for myself to get my fix of hot milo and for the cousins to get their breakfast. i had my standard routine breakfast, my banana flavoured moolabar. the hot milo, took 10 minutes to serve up, and the cousin's brekkiewrap took even longer. so we were pretty late to the racestart to set up our bikes and transition.

2. i'm quite useless when it comes to setting up bikes. i have zero knowledge. i only know how to ride the bike, not that i'm that good at it anyways. so my uncle had to do the setting up for me. by the time we were done setting up 4 bikes (myself, my uncle, my cousin sister and her boyfriend), it was 630 already. 650am was the call to the starting line. so technically, we had 20 minutes to get ourselves from the carpark to the racestart, check in our bikes, set up our transition area, for me - i needed to go shit, warmup, and get our butts to the starting line. hmm, didn't look too optimistic about getting everything done.

3. i forgot my helmet - thankfully uncle noticed so got it out of the car.

4. i went to check in my bike and set up my transition area as quick as i could. so much so i forgot to take note of my bike row, later on causing me to run into the wrong row. aihs.

5. after that i ran to look for the toilet - which was pretty damn far away. i've mentioned before, not being able to shit before a race majorly stresses me out. so, thankfully i managed to unload before the race.

6. i didn't manage to warmup, because once i was done shitting, it was already 650.

7. but that was also when i realized i left my timing chip in the car. i had to run all the way to the car, grab my timing chip, and run back to the start line, with really minutes to spare before flagoff. phew.

8. my quads cramped up for the first time in my life. 300m from the finishing line on the 2nd leg of my run, my quads cramped up. i was in 2nd position at that point, unfortunately, i wasn't able to hold on to the lead and came in 4th.

9. oh and i didn't win the lucky draw.

but looking at the bright side, so many things did go right for me hehe.

1. i came in 1st after the first leg of the run. i knew i was weak at cycling, well, because i never cycle, i cycle once in a rainbow moon (not even blue moon). i don't cycle - cycling is just something i need to do to get to the run leg. so i knew i had to put in a substantial gap during the run leg. the next girl caught up to me at the 10km point of the bike, which of course was not to my surprise. i would be surprised if noone caught up. 2 other girls passed me on the bike leg. but i think i still did pretty well. during the 2nd run leg, my first kilometre was a 5min10s pace before moving to an under 5 minute pace. i completely forgot how heavy legs could feel when running after a bike sesh. but all in all, i think i did pretty well. i didn't train for this, so i can't complain about the results. our coach always tells us, when other people win, its just because you didn't train hard enough, they did, which is super true in this case. my training effort for this duathlon would probably be at 5 percent.

2. my cousins and uncle completed their first duathlon. i'm mad proud of them. i'm sure they had the time of their life

3. when i was cramping up, it was comforting that alot of people actually did stop to help. it was my first time cramping, and not in the calves but my quads. i was screaming in pain. after a few minutes of being stationary, i limped, hopped, then set back into running back to the finishing line.

4. our saturday night down in pd was crazy fun. roadtrips are always fun. espicially with the cousins.

5. we raced for 2 hours, but ate for more than 2 hours lol.

6. i bumped into many old friends. it was good to catch up with them during the race pack collection and welcome dinner.

many thanks my cousins and uncle for really, just everything, from helping me with set up, to stopping to help me with my cramps. to my friends who always more confident in me than i am in myself, thanks for all the kind encouraging and supporting words, texts and messages. got a last minute surprise visit from coach since he ended up volunteering for the event. thanks for his last minute help during my super havoc sunday morning. more importantly, thanks moolabar for never failing me as my pre-race breakfast. and also, salomon for my super-shoes.