The alarm went off at 4:30am on Saturday, a quick shower to get the blood flowing and time to go meet everyone and cycle down to the race in the dark to set up in the transition area…thus started the big day.
Come 8:30am I was diving into the rather chilly waters of Pacific Grove surrounded by 100+ other nutters in the TNT men’s wave, Kerry followed in the first of the TNT women’s waves at 8:45am.
42min later I exited the water after swimming 1.5km and headed to the transition area to get my bike for the 40km ride.
It took me 1hr 26min to complete the ride and head back into the transition area to change for the run, my least favourite part of the event…2 down, 1 to go.
The 10km run was the hardest part, but, 1hr 3min later I was crossing the finish line with Mike Bishopp (a fellow Brit) waving the Union Jack flag high in the air.
In total it took me 3hr 23min 41sec to complete the race, beating my personal goal of 3hr 30min. Kerry finished in 3hr 55min 34sec, beating her goal of 4hrs. It was an amazing day, what an incredible sense of achievement!
Between the 2 of us we raised over $11,000 for LLS. To everyone who donated, thank you, thank you, thank you. Whilst it’s been a long 3.5 months of training, it has been just so much fun being part of the East Bay TNT tri team and in a strange kind of way the race itself was actually quite enjoyable…maybe that means I’m now addicted to triathlons.