HELLO, yep, I did it! My longest triathlon to date! I arrived at the venue at Champion Lakes at 6am when registration opened to set up for the race starting at 8am.

There were two events, - a 'short' and 'long' course. I did the longer one. We had various wave starts all 3 mins apart from each other. I was in 30-39 for 'long' of course.

The water for the swim was a nice temp, not too cold. But it was a bit murky and I found out I needed new goggles. At one point I got about 80 metres off course after putting my head down, swimming hard etc! Shit! In the end I pulled my goggles up so I didn't lose any more direction. But I still did the 400m swim in 8 mins something which isn't too bad.

I had also got over using sucker water bottles because no matter what, they leaked and generally leaked onto things like mobile phones, passports, documents or whatever. But screw tops have always been safe.

So I had a 1L bottle Mt Franklin water with a screw top on my bike cage on the bike. About 5km into the bike ride I slowed down slightly to open it for a gulp or two. After a couple I decided to attempt to put cap on and put bottle back into the cage on my bike. I slowed down a bit, tried to put the bottle in, (with intention of then screwing top on). BUT alas, bottle slipped out of my hand onto ground and I lost all my water! Therefore I had to hang out till 800m into the run till I could get some but it wasn't too bad, just annoying! Not sure of my overall time but about 1 hour 17 or 18 mins. Wasn't last either, (not that holding up the rear end is a bad thing). I think some finishers were finishing about 15-20 mins after me.

Pics at top are from today just after I arrived to rack up bike and set up, (before most people came!)

Talk soon

Pip :-)