Sometimes things don’t go to plan - reflections from 70.3 IM Nice
Well, here goes!
The plan was to head to Nice from our place in Allemond mid week, tapering down slowly in the mountains whilst focusing on some rest and mobility for the hip. Sadly, this did not happen. A week out from the race, Ernie (chief ginger cat in the Bungay household) became very ill. Fortunately Ade and Fin were home and after some stressful (and expensive) visits to the vets I had a final call from the vets with the diagnosis of lymphoma, advising the kindest solution was to put him to sleep. 2 hours later Annie Noah and myself were driving back to Dorset in their van to see the fella for one last time. (Our van still broken and somewhere in France) We got home (5am), stressed, sad, no sleep and spent a day with him before we took him to the vets. It’s crazy isn’t it how we get so attached to these pets, and it was a very sad day. Honestly at this point I had no real desire to spend another 15 hours in the van to get back to Nice, but did. Stupidly I forgot a lot of my race kit so we drove to Allemond first, planning it so we would not be up half the night again. Another fail, due to a landslide (10mins from our house) and no alternative route around, so got there around 4am - very stiff, very tired. Quick turnaround the next day for a 5-6 hour drive to Nice where I registered at 5pm ish and made our way to our apartment in Cannes Sur Mer. Which was lovely except for a few hiccups - the most stressful being the coffee machine failure .
2 days pre race I was exhausted, stiff, and no amount of mobility and nutrition and rest was working. Sleep remained terrible, and I was flat and just knackered come Saturday. Every bone in my body said spectate, but I felt I would let myself down and everyone else.
So I went through the process, the swim went badly, got onto the bike and my legs were shot. Like that pure lactate build up feeling and they were not easing. Then I hit a pothole going up a climb and the chain bounced off and got stuck. At which point I very nearly threw the towel in. However a nice volunteer held my bike and was very encouraging whilst I sorted in and made the decision to push on. Only to struggle with hip/back/side pain so limited nutrition and just a miserable ride. On the positive side though, the bike when you get it up to speed is speedy, and by about 50k my back and legs had eased. T2- disaster - despite visualizing and noting where my bike was, I ran past it and just could not work out the numbered racking. 5 mins later after running around aimlessly I found it- picked up run gear - headed off only to leave all my gels on the floor. Ran back, picked them up then dropped half of them on the way out. A lovely spectator ran up the road after me to deliver them back. Very kind! Then my run belt broke so spent the next few hours with it around my shoulder and neck
As for the run, retrospectively I should have stopped. My hip was really tight, and my mindset and energy levels were rock bottom. Added to that my right shoe felt really weird and after 5k I was getting a lot of toe pressure and bruising. So I walked - with the odd jog until it was over. Honestly, I hated the whole experience and quit triathlon many many times. Turns out the front half of the sole of my shoe came off, honestly you couldn’t make it up, but at least it explains some of it. As for hip, honestly I am beginning to accept that it just cannot handle running off the bike, and if I want to carry on enjoying the challenge of racing I need to branch away from triathlon.
I have not reached an answer to that yet, and have a few races lined up in October, so I need to have a long hard think.
As for take aways - I am not in my 20s anymore and have biomechanical limitations at the best of times. Rather than just going through the process I should have stopped, reflected, assessed the pros/cons of racing and made a rationale decision based on the evidence. I did not give myself the opportunity to do this. So what now? Not sure, currently Sleep, recover and a bottle of wine are the only things in my to do list.