I celebrated my 40th birthday in a memorable way: with a triathlon race in Kinloch, New Zealand, which was also a qualifying race for Age Group World Champs.

There were few events in Kinlock that day. The previous one, the Erin Baker awards, had few big names, including Cameron Brown and Jo Law. Overall, there were lots of hardened triathletes who have already been to world champs and who have been competing at national level. It was awesome watching them compete and learning from them.


As for my race on that day... Three days prior I got sick with cold and ripping cough. Getting enough oxygen is hard enough task for the swim anyway, but with cold it felt like swimming in high altitude. Whether I can use this as an excuse for my slow pace, I don't know.
Taupo lake was flat as pancake that day. It is very transparent, probably up to 5m of depth. It's not as cold as Wellington ocean and at one point in a day, officials banned the wet suits. Our swim was in wet suits and it felt a bit hot by the end of it.

Bike leg is flat for the first few km and then there is an undulating 150m climb over 7 km. My legs were trashed by the time I reached the top of the hill. Nobody passed me, more due to the fact that really fast people were way to ahead of me. I passed about 20 people and enjoyed the spin down to the transition.

Run has 2 smaller inclines and a small grass area, the rest is just pavements. Running is my weakness, something I am still working on and I didn't have high expectations from myself, but I knew I would push myself to whatever limit I had in me.

It was a very hot 25C day and I went hard on a bike, so my legs only kept moving by the power of will, I thought I was initially just jogging. I kept repeating over and over in my head "This is it! Push yourself right now and you can rest later!" and kept pushing myself just to the next landmark and then again to the next landmark, concentrating only on legs and elbows moving. Heat slowed everyone down and drained all the energy, so when I finally reached the finish line I was happy it was over and even happier knowing I did my best with what I had.

I made it and got what I've been training so hard for: the qualification for Sprint Age Group World Championship in Budapest, Hungary. Not bad for the first season! For all of you who made it too, see you there in September !

Tanya

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