Sophie Whitworth

So pleased today to have at last after a 7 month famine of triathlon racing actually got the chance to get out there and compete. The 12 degree water did wonders for my foot, i.e. when I hit the run my feet were so cold if there was an injury to deal with I wasn’t going to feel it anyway! But seriously it does seem to be helping twice daily dunkings of foot into bucket of ice blocks. I have always understood that you need to ice this injury, but recently I took advice of Parys from Fullon tri who suffered for 3 yrs as a hockey player and the only way she shifted it was by iceing it in buckets of iced water at the side of her hockey pitches. The run terrain was quite uneven under foot and I just ran tentatively to get through it. I have to say that even I though I have not run for weeks I was still quite disappointed with my run split as I thought my overall fitness would have delivered better, but as things improve i am sure I can get this back to a better situation.

Anyway the swim and bike legs were as I had hoped. I knew I had to hit it hard as one of my life long age group rivals Yvette Grice thwarted by lack of racing in IM SA recently suddenly hit the start list before hand. She is an amazing runner and I knew that my recent bike form needed to be on full gas. Luckily I was only 10 secs from Yvette at end of swim, the bike went to plan and I had done enough to get round the run to win my wave. Jenny Latham, an emerging 20-24 talent won the race overall 38 secs ahead of me. She did really well as did a few youngsters who were really running and swimming super fast. The overall race seemed to be high qulaity with lots of pepole chasing Budapest sprint slots, and europeans for next year. Mike did a good job, he reckons she shoiuld have been 1min or so quicker, but had to ease back as his HR went shooting up to 200 after the swim and wouldn’t come back down again, so we’ll see in due course if he gets a slot for Budapest, we might be looking at another sprint outing!
Next stop Austria 70.3. We’ll really have to see how that goes, 1 week ago doing a 1/2 marathon seemed a distant dream and it still is. I’ll prepare to go the distance in my aqua jogger no doubt, and we’ll have to see what the plantar facia deals up on the day….