So, I guess the more years you spend competing in triathlon, the more you learn and understand that you need to work with your body, and adapt to its strengths whilst building on the weaknesses.

Last year I had to drop out of the ITU age group worlds, having broken my foot only 6 weeks beforehand.  I was aiming for the top spot and certainly for a podium finish – I was gutted, absolutely gutted!  The absolute positive was that the race I broke my foot in was Calgary 70.3 – which I loved from beginning to end, including running on a broken foot for 10k.  Anyhow, so coming in 2^nd, and having a blast, I was convinced this was the distance for me going forward.

New focus for Winter training – the bike, evidently longer (!), would need a strong back, so something for me to work on over the Winter.  The only problem was that my back REALLY didn’t want to play.  I spent all of the Winter (until end of May) in physio – having over 50 needles in my back, butt and legs on a weekly basis trying to sort the sciatica out.  The training was minimal.  To say that it was a difficult time would be a huge understatement – and yes, not often, but there were tears of pure frustration at times – no matter what I did, it just didn’t seem to want to budge – biking sitting up for 5 minutes with firing pain shooting through your hip and down your leg ain’t much fun!!

Anyhow, we did what we could.  I had Boise 70.3 already in the race calendar mid June.  To get into race mode, I ran a triathlon here in town at our local lake, which was superb!  We had an absolute blast.  Over a dozen local triathletes racing and getting ready for the season – all finished with a BBQ on the beach – can’t beat that!

So, onto Boise, and down to Idaho we headed.  My target was to get my worlds spot in Vegas in September.  It was going to be a challenge for sure, with little Winter training done, but I wanted to give it my best.

It was a gorgeous, gorgeous day.  Forecast to be 25 in the day.  The race site for the swim was simply outstanding.  Now the only thing that wasn’t quite so fantastic was the temperature of the water – yikes, 11 degrees really isn’t very warm!!  The wetsuit helps for sure, but when you lose all feeling in your hands, feet and face, getting out to 25 degree was very welcome indeed!  The swim went well, came out of the water in the top 3, ready to hit the bike.  The bike course at Boise is rolling – beautiful scenery.  The disappointing part for me was that my sciatica kicked in at mile 5 of the bike.  This was going to be a loooooonnnnngggg race, with a lot of pain L  I was still determined to get my worlds spot, so I tried to put the pain out of my mind, and get on with racing J

To say I was happy to get off my bike would be an understatement J  The run was a 2 lap course.  My sciatica stayed with me for the first half – ouch – it normally goes within the first 10 minutes of getting off the bike, but not to be today….. Sooooo……I crossed the line in 3^rd place, both on the podium and my worlds spot secured.  We left Boise feeling very chipper indeed J

There’s a “however” here…..after much thought, I decided not to go to Vegas for the worlds after all.  My back was in A LOT of pain.  Although I’d done a lot of dry needling and massage leading up to the race, my core and back were nowhere near strong enough yet for a 90km race effort.  When I race, I want to RACE, I don’t want to do anything half heartedly.  So I decided to give the Worlds a miss, re-assess my race season, try and get my strength going, and consider an end of season race somewhere before I headed into the Winter.