The Icebreaker Part IIIIII - wrap up

Tuesday, 9 July 2013

This is the eleventy-millionth part of a doodlysquillion part race report.  Scroll down to part one if you can be arsed...or don't... whatever..

So.  Firstly - here's a lesson for young graphic designers - don't forsake function for style. This is my race number:

Yep, so I was number.. um.... 7 no 1, then  6, no hang on 5. Then 1 or 4?  154 ?  Yep number 154. Actually I knew my number pretty well by the end of the race as the volunteers had no chance of reading the numbers for themselves so you had to yell it out each time through the transition.  

But overall the event was pretty good - it's the perfect length for me.  Apart from the race numbers it seemed to be a slicker production than last year in lots of ways so I really hope it does grows to the extent that the organisers would like it to - it's certainly a great area for it. The organisers and volunteers were nice and it had a nice atmosphere about it.

Also we all got an Ice Breaker t-shirt as part of registration but my size was gone by the time we arrived late so I got one for Jon instead which he is happy with.

So what happened to Jenny? Well it turned out I was 4:30 faster on the paddle (and she said she had some issues at the first buoy which would have accounted for a couple of those) but then I actually managed to cycle  2mins 30 secs faster than her which is surprising.  That meant I had almost seven minutes up my sleeve going into the run and she pulled back three of them.  Thus I finished 4 minutes ahead. 

And Rowena Fry - the super MTBer? Well she was 11 minutes slower than me on the paddle, 20 minutes faster on the bike, then she proved her all-around-athleteness by backing it up with a blistering run 9 minutes faster than me and from what I can tell from the results, close to the fastest female run time of the day. Impressive.  But I never thought I'd be in her class anyway - and as I'm not in her category either I'm happy to just be impressed by her abilities.

And me? Well I'm delighted I did it. I'm not awesome or anything and I'm first to admit the women's field was pretty small (but I can't control that) but I achieved my twin goals of finishing and being the first solo woman off the water.   I also surprised myself with a respectable run leg and I'm going to give myself marks for avoiding almost certain doom at the hands of TRAAACKKKK guy by being on my game at that particular point.

Would I do it again? I'm not sure, but if I was ever going to do another event  solo this would certainly be the one.   In the meantime I'm going to concentrate on my paddling (for our family team) and just enjoying my mountain biking and the occasional run. 

That's a cool ice axe themed trophy I'm holding. Unfortunately it's perpetual so whilst my name will be on it, I don't get to keep it!