Too much splash and one fun dash...

I made it to Splash and Dash! Finally! (seriously- I've been meaning/trying/failing to get to one of these for, oh, two years or something!?) I finished work easily on time (after a pretty productive day) and the weather looked good too.

The race was a bunch of fun. The swim was pretty awful- at one point I thought I was coming dead last (I wasn't..), I was struggling to navigate and the start was much more crowded than my last two races. I splashed around and breathed atrociously for at least the first 500m of the 730m swim! I was pretty disappointed with myself after my swimming on Monday- I really need to learn to chill the f out in race swims! I also need to come to terms with the fact that other women who don't look fast are often better swimmers than I am! .

I stumbled up into T1 to the sea of discarded wetsuits and made a beeline for my shoes. Unfortunately my calves were cramping so badly that I couldn't put my shoes on. I was putting my feet towards the shoes, angling them in and then recoiling in pain. Ow! I could see P looking at me with concern and (maybe) pity (he always looks so shocked when I come out of the water! It's funny, but can be a little disheartening. I think he thinks I am one of the speedy ones, and he gets quite confused when I don't come out with the leaders Confusion turns to concern, then to downright worry "Why's she last????". I have now informed him that although some women who shouldn't be beating me are, the leaders, even in races like this, are NZ AGers, junior champs, Kona AG competitors and even the odd elite)and I decided not to run and to change my entry to a very pathetic swim only. No dash. I was about to climb out of transition when I decided to give the left foot one more go and it went in. Right followed suit and we were off.

It was great to be running, though confusing seeing people going the other way and not being sure just how far they were in front of me (2 lap course). I was also watchless, so had no idea how bad or not-so-bad things were. I felt like I was keeping a good pace, and only super fast guys seemed to be passing, so although I could see plenty of women ahead of me, I just wanted to keep working. I ended up passing a couple of decent bunches, including some men (who had started a minute before us, and on the way back the second time, I realised that some of the people "in front" of me were behind me. I didn't manage to take out Mrs Red Top, which is shocking, as she was in my reach for so long. I should have passed her at the 500m to go mark and let her be the driver on the way back. Instead I delayed, eventually saw the gap growing and couldn't find the kick to beat her. Grr. I think if I had passed and she had passed back my finish sprinter would have come out- next time Mrs Red Top. Next time.

Not sure of time yet. P thinks my swim was 16ish (yuck), and I finished at 6:55 having started at 6:21. So that suggests a good solid 4k run (18ish mins?), but we might be a minute or even more off. Official results won't have splits, but I should be able to figure some better guesstimates out!

Healthy eating went out the window again, when P surprised me with fish and chips on the beach. I could hardly say no, and they were PERFECT! (plus, given the race and the 600 cals I burned at spin this am, I'm ok calorie-wise)

Tomorrow is yoga. We have brand spankin new matching mats. Yay! R&R week has been a little lacking both in R and in R, but I still think it'll be about half last week in terms of time, especially with a cruisy weekend planned, and at much lower intensity so I am not kicking myself too hard yet. I feel awesome. Knock wood.