Ironman 70.3 Venice-Jesolo September 26th 2021
It has been a long time since I took part in major triathlon event like this one, since most races that we had hoped to do were cancelled or postponed due to the Covid dangers.
After my age group win at the ITU Worlds in Lausanne 2019, we were full of racing enthusiasm and entered three big races that were to be held in May 2020. These would have made up one good holiday period. Then there were the postponements, and to fit around other established race dates they ended up not being together any more.
We were able to defer our entries and that is how we ended up being able to compete in the Ironman70.3 Venice-Jesolo race that was moved finally to this last weekend.
With all the isolation rules, we have another race with our entries still deferred until 2022.
We started well in keeping our training going during first year of the pandemic but when it did not look any better earlier this year we
lost heart a bit with one thing and another and annoyingly lost some of our form EG: We were not able to keep the swim training going because all the pools were closed.
On top of that there were other problems that caused us to almost lose our focus completely, as happed to so many people.
Earlier this year we were able to start swim straining again but that was a very slow process to try to get back in shape and being older people didn’t help. Steve and I had suffered a lot of shoulder pain from NOT swimming and that is still not fully resolved. We did one race a month earlier where Steve completed the whole swim using only one arm, his pain and lack of movement was so intense.
That is how we arrived at this important event with the hope only, of being to get to the finish line since at the first attempt earlier we DNF-ed (Did Not Finish).
We started to see the light at the end of the tunnel one week before, when we took part in our English National Aquathlon Championships with a 750 mtr sea swim and a 5KM run, this was close to home. We both enjoyed that event and seemed to have got a bit of form back with the added plus that we both got a podium place. That was a feel-good factor and half.
The distance in Venice-Jesolo were a lot longer.
1900 metre swim in the Adriatic Sea/56 miles bike ride/ a half marathon run.
Although our swim training had been improving steadily, neither of us had put our wet suits on for a long time. What happen was that even though I had been swimming 1900 metres in the pool in around 49 minutes, I struggled a bit in the wetsuit which is funny because most people prefer to wear the wettie but our two recent events were too warm for wetsuits and in the Aquathlon I had a great swim (for an old girl) that I was really happy with. My swim in this 70.3 race was over ten minutes slower than it should have been.
Out on the bike, I felt fine and kept a nice steady pace and had no problems thank heavens, I drank plenty and demolished the food I had brought on my bike. OK I admit here that I my choice of race bike food is horrific. Jelly babies or something like that for me. I don’t like anything that needs chewing and find it hard to breathe eating power bars and that sort of thing. My front drink is coffee with creamer and honey, plus and extra water bottle. This bike course had a number of bumpy places and a couple of nasty scaffolding gantries covered with race carpets and at one of those, my water bottle had bounced off and I didn’t notice until I reached for it later. That was not a big problem because I just pulled up at an aid station when my coffee was finished and poured a bottle of water of the front drinker. Apart from the un-heard of gantries, the course was pancake flat with lots of canals and countryside.
On getting back to Transition again I was surprised to see that Steve was still there although he was 13-14 minutes ahead of me. He was with a race marshal and had a horrible problem. This was something I have never heard off before in the 30 years of racing. When he got in there was another person’s bike was placed on Steve’s spot, and horror of horrors that man had not found his run bag there, so found and opened Steve’s run bag and stole his trainers to go out on the run. Strangely enough they must have both taken the same size because when the marshal investigated the problem and brought that other mans bag to see if those trainers were any good to Stephen. They were the same size but these were not of the same quality, soft racers whereas Steve’s had good support. The marshal said the man who had stolen my husband’s trainers would be disqualified. His number was 1533.
Stephens race number was1553.
With the marshals say so; Steve finally started the run in the other bloke’s naff trainers and we ended up going out on the run together, the ado had taken so long and wasted all of Steve’s bike advantage over me. That much was nice though since we always run train together at home.
We have not run a half marathon a very long time… maybe four years! So, the run was not comfortable and involved running between lamp posts here and there. We were maybe the only people who were delighted when it first started to rain lightly and then developed into a big thunderstorm and lightning display that cooled us down nicely.
We had a great reception at the finish and with all the problems, were not even last.
At the awards ceremony Steve got the second place in his age group 70-74 age group and I was the oldest woman by nearly twenty years and so won my age group 80-84 and was given the most amazing reception and congratulations by many people including all the dignitaries who were there to make the presentations. Lots of photos too. The ceremony had suffered a last-minute move because of the weather, to the civic building in the town were registration was held previously. They did extremely well to meet this last minute move and had to call all the prize winners about the move. Very professional.
