Sunday - Opera House swim + 34km Run

On Sunday I'd intended to do the Balmoral club sprint triathlon at 6.30am, then back up with the Sydney Harbour Swim from the Opera House at about 10am.

Those plans were scuttled however, when I turned up to Dempsey & Jarred's wedding on Saturday night and saw Woody and Ramsay - two good friends who have been living in Hong Kong and who we hadn't seen since we'd visited them there 3 years ago. It ended up being a fantastic wedding (beautiful ceremony, great venue, excellent food and wine as well as really funny speeches) and we spent some time carrying on and catching up which meant late to bed (past 1am).

So when I woke up at 5.30am and saw the rain pouring down I was happy enough to jump back into bed! Maybe I’m soft for not doing a triathlon in the rain on very little sleep, but then again I’ve been there (Canberra Half Ironman – less sleep and more rain!) and I have nothing to prove.

Got up again around 9am, jumped on my bike and cruised over to the opera house to meet Dan for the swim. The weather had cleared a bit and it was grey but dryish and warm enough and the new 2km swim course looked… well it looked identical to the 1.6km swim course from last year! Turned out it was.

This actually felt like more of a training session than a real ocean swim. Just no nerves or butterflies – I guess after a season of battling big surf, intense chop, rips, currents, bluebottles and wind at most swims, this was more like a dip in a warm calm pool!

I still can’t go very fast though. I tried, lord how I tried, to go fast. I focussed on technique, long strokes, catching, pulling, rotating my body – the lot. I tried to sprint at the end. All the same, I seemed to go at exactly the same pace no matter what I did and never gained any ground on any of the people swimming around me at the same pace! Finished the swim in 29:56 which I guess was ok for me, but pretty slow compared to the times posted (22 out of 31 in my category). I do need some stroke correction.

Afterwards we had an indoor picnic with Dan and Juliet and their kids Livia and Ella who went through our apartment with the rigour of a team of forensic police with a search warrant! It was good fun. When they left I had a glorious hour long nap and read for a while before dragging my butt out of the house on THE LONG RUN.

The usual route to Clifton Gardens, round the park twice and then back. The goal was 34km and I nearly got to 35 in the end, it took 3:25mins and I was pretty much spot on 6:00min/km pace. Not that hot, but considering the hills it wasn’t too bad I guess.

I definitely need a few more >30km runs before Canberra, my mileage is shite. That’s only my third run longer than 30km! And with only 3 runs per week and about 50km total mileage per week I’m seriously wondering how prepared I’ll be for Canberra?

But then I think that maybe there is something to the 3 runs per week plus cross training because I’m definitely feeling better for all my runs than I was last year and my times seem to be coming down, so … in the end what the hell, I’m doing Canberra and I’m going to push for 3:10 so we’ll see.