Last race of the season coming up…

• Posted onjofrancis
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• onSeptember 13, 2016
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Victoria Stears – #thetrilifereporter – Month 7

Last month’s training was a bit hit and miss. Following on from the spontaneous aquathlon that I did at the end of July, I developed a chest infection which decided to linger for 3 weeks. I tried my best to continue with training before realising that, as an asthmatic, I probably should have a bit of rest…I loosely followed my training plan during those three weeks, although took swimming and cycling down to one session per week to try and give myself a bit of relief.

The chest infection eventually cleared up, leaving me with one week to get race ready for the Oysterman Triathlon. Of course, during that week I became ill in other ways and became hugely frustrated at the thought of going into the race feeling inadequately prepared.   Still, I had a huge amount of enthusiasm to bring to the race and as a few family members were also racing I decided to give it a good go. My mantra when it comes to racing at the moment is; ‘to give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift’ and that is what I tend to repeat in my head whilst out on the course. Although I certainly gave the best I could give on the day of the Oysterman and had a huge amount of fun doing so, it certainly wasn’t what I would have given had I been 100% healthy.

I should perhaps also mention at this stage that I was diagnosed with hyperextension in my feet recently and have been in quite a lot of pain whilst running…which of course flared up on the run, and meant my run was so slow I was practically running backwards.

The good news is that over the past 6 months of training, my swimming has really come along leaps and bounds and I actually enjoy an open water swim now. In fact, I almost enjoy it too much and forget that I should be swimming for speed rather than for the fact that I’m enjoying a lovely sunny morning swimming along the coast. I also really need to work on transitions and getting out of a wetsuit as efficiently and gracefully as possible (I forgot to vaseline before Oysterman and had an almighty battle on my hands when exiting the swim).

My next and last race of the season is Hever Castle later this month, and whilst I’m still not feeling 100% I want to make sure I race to the best of my ability and go in with so much enthusiasm and energy that I have nothing left to give.