Back in the race game!!

I did a race on the weekend. Normally that would be a common scenario, and in the past I've made a habit of doing at least one event per month...of some nature or form. Racing frequently is good to maintain familiarity with the competition arena and the routine, nerves, tactics, performance and more. A better racer will often beat a better athlete because they know how to perform when it counts. Anyway, this is getting a little off the main topic.

You see, this was my first race since Sunday 2nd May, about 5.5 months ago, which means it was breaking a drought similar to the recent drought breaking rains across Victoria. And the reason is that it's worthy of a blog post is that in that time, of course, I've had achilles surgery and this race involved running...albeit only a small distance. It was, in fact, a swimming race, but a race is a race and that was the exciting bit.

The 2XU open water swim race was part of the Shepparton Half Ironman weekend of events, held on the Saturday afternoon to expand the range of participants in this weekend of triathlon racing. The course was 1500m in the main Kialla lake, from a deep water start around the island, back to the start, round the island again, emerging at a little beach before the "clutch" part of the race, a 200m run to the finish line. Short, fast, intense...and a race!!!

I did this same event last year, when the field was much smaller and managed to come second in the masters category of 35+...and thought it a shame there was no veteran category recognising my actual 40+ age!!! But they were the rules and nevertheless I was back for more this year, although my swim form in training has been lagging a lot under the weight (literally) of the gym work I've been doing as part of achilles re-hab. I was swimming more like a brick than a fish.

Anyway, I was excited just by what this race represented in my return to fitness and racing and lined up in the deep water feeling excited to be in the heat of things again. It felt like a reuniting with an old friend, where the first moments include some tentativeness and awkwardness, but ultimately the familiarity wins over and it's like you were never parted...and then the starting hooter went.

Sparing the details of the actual swim...except to note the part I went off course towards some buoys that were not actually part of the course...I swam true to recent form and slogged it around the swim course in anticipation of the beach and the running segment...I was quite pretty sure my achilles would be OK, but you never know. In the end it was all OK. Perhaps a fraction stiff, and feeling awkward running in a wetsuit anyway, I crossed the line with my heart pumping in my mouth and pleased to actually run under a finish arch again. Back in the race game!!!

The achilles has been going really well recently. I've been back in to running (plus walking) for about 8 weeks and up to doing 15 min run blocks separated by 1 min of walking, this week covering 11 km per session x 4 per week. While the achilles has been great, my calf has been the thing holding me back due to the loss of strength and function during the time post surgery, but that is improving all the time...as is my overall fitness. It's a long road back, but gee it's good to be running again. Sometime soon I hope to do an actual running race!!