Bike Check in and Sprint day: Ironman 70.3 Gdynia, Poland

 

This morning I woke up first thing, very early in fact thinking that I had seriously passed my sell by date in Triathlon. I had a headache, ear-ache, a bit of a sore throat and my heart rate pounding at a silly pace. Trying to stay in bed and not disturb Steve was torture and I began to think it was, after all, time to jack the whole thing in because is seems to be just plain daft to get so nervous about something that is supposed to be fun. Being longer in the tooth is not helping. 

I have always suffered from pre race nerves. When we first started doing races that were a bit more important or longer distance than the fun race we started with, I got to the point where, as Steve zipped up my wetsuit I would throw up. As that got progressively worse to the point where it was misery, I rang a hypnotist who had been recommended to see it I could be calmed down. The man I rang told me that he had recently retired for health reasons but when I told him my story, he came first to talk to us both in our home and then agreed to see me several times before my first World Championships in Muskoka, Canada. It did help actually, quite a lot, and he told me that if I did the little mental exercises he taught me that it would continue to improve, which it did. When I rang him some time later for a set of reinforcement sessions, his wife told me that he had recently died. The hairdresser friend that I went to in those days, started referring to the poor man as, ‘That guy you killed.’ I really hope that I was not the cause of his death but at the same time I must admit that it was very shortly after my course of treatment with him.  

Once Steve woke up today, I made him a jasmine tea and a cup of my home brew coffee that includes a spoonful of Manuka honey and a bit of vigorous stirring to blend it in smoothly. We both had a shower and dressed ready to walk over to Starbucks but when I told Steve that I could not find any hair bands to tie our heads of slightly longer hair than we used to wear, back for the race. We change the route and went to then next Starby’s further on, that was not much more that 500 metres away from the one nearby, on the way to coffee we found a store similar to Superdrug in the UK where we picked the packet of hair bands up.

Then we came back to our room and set out the bags we will use in the race: Blue bag for the Bike and Red bag for Run kit, then we laid out everything we needed for the swim and also what we would put on to wear down to the start in the morning. Steve checked both bikes again. 

The sprint race was on this morning and we ambled down to the end if the pier to watch how the swim exit, bike bag pickup, changing tent and transition worked and were happy to see that it was all very well handled by the volunteer crew and that everything seemed to run smoothly. That will all be cleared by the time we go down for our own bike check-in later this afternoon.  

In the morning, my swim wave start is the first wave after the Pro Athletes, men and women. Steve has another forty minutes to wait after me for his wave start that I think is the last for the 70.3 race.

 

Here are a few shots of this morning Sprint event swim finish