Vansbro Challenge Triathlon – Sweden

 The last few days, I have migrated over to Sweden again. The travel was difficult, I got caught up in the recent flight cancellation chaos, caused by bad weather in New York area, air traffic control shortage and I don’t know what. I got stuck in Houston for over 24 hours and stood in a line trying to get new flights for over 4.5 hours. This was at night. Overall, the travel was not good for my fitness level.

Eventually I did reach Sweden, bone tired of course. On the positive side, I did not get sick.

I tried to catch up on training right away, but sensibly. I do not want to get sick or injured, and after a major exhaustion event like this, the risk is high. First day, I tested my Swedish road bike, a Trek Madone I bought in 2010, a very good bike. A short 12-mile ride at a slow pace proved that I, and the bike, was still working. Then I put on my wetsuit and swam for about 15 minutes in the local lake.

Saturday July 1, 3 days after arriving, I raced in Challenge Vansbro Sprint Triathlon. The Challenge series features pro racers, but they all did the half Ironman distance, which I was not interested in. The sprint was for amateurs, and we were all in one class together called “exercise”.

I still take every race seriously, and I try to do my best all the way. Weather was good, maybe 70 degrees, cloudy and no showers during the race. The swim leg was only 400m. First half with the current and the return against the current. It was an in-water mass start and I tried to warm up beforehand, but the wetsuit felt too tight, and I was not comfortable. I placed myself far out in the river to use the maximum power of the current. It was very crowded with swimmers everywhere and we frequently bumped into each other. I can see a less experienced swimmer being freaked out by that. At turn around, I swam as close to the shore as possible to avoid the counter current. I felt out of breath and having no rhythm the entire time, but I had swum faster than usual.

Seeing my time, I was encouraged and breezed through T1, apparently the 4^th fastest time in the entire field…  I am not sure, but I suspect I was the oldest.

Bike leg was an out and back, it started (and ended) fairly technical with many turns but then opened up to a straight and flat stretch. I know I should keep over 18 miles/hour to be competitive and I struggled to do that. Maybe I struggled too hard, I was not fast on the running part, which is usually my best part. I can blame the poor time maybe on some uneven track, but it was more than that. I was just slow.

After many very fast runs recently, this was unexpected. Now I wonder if the long queuing in Houston affected my leg muscles, they were definitely sore after the tip.

It was good to do this race, I need to wake up and get more competition ready before important races. I ended up at 27th place amongst 59 starting women, swim was my best leg, and bike the worst.