Tomorrow I’m going to join over 400 women of all shapes, ages and abilities to participate in the Real Womens Duathlon at Orewa, (Auckland).

I am officially competitor number 451 and I will be starting in Wave 10 with the aim of completing a 1.5k run, 10k cycle then a 3.5k run to finish off the event.

I’ve got two goals.

1. To finish the event in under an hour my best guesstimate is that it will take me 59 minutes but that doesn’t include transition times (and I’m wearing cleats so I will actually have to change shoes twice) so I could be pushing the envelope – but we won’t know till I try …
2. (And this is going to be even harder) I want to try and catch the girls in my support group who are starting before me.  I’ve got one who has an 8 minute head start, another has a 5 minute head start and we also have a team of three in our group and their wave is 1 minute before mine.

I’m hoping that the “game” of catch the girls will keep my mind focused on moving forward instead of pulling back every time I come to a corner on the bike leg.

So keep your fingers crossed for me because I’m going to need all the positive thoughts I can get (especially if they read this blog entry and move faster).    If I do manage to catch them – I’m guessing its going to be on the second run leg.  I’m going to give it a good go.

Right .. so lets catch up because this week I have been a little slack on the blog front.   Can I blame the fact that it is a recovery week so I haven’t actually done much in the way of tri training to report on?

In a nutshell –

Run: – 1 long run along the waterfront Tuesday morning.

Swim: – 1 session with Haydn.  Missed a couple of sessions due to events being held in my pool and no lanes being available in the times I can get there .. hoping to catch the tide Sunday so I will only be short one session.

Bike: – Ummm none (so far).  The plan is to ride tonight after work then obviously tomorrow at the Duo and then finally on Sunday (and since I only had to do two sessions this week I’ll actually end up being up a session).

Ludus: – Oh ludus my ludus.  Three .. yes, yes I know I could have used those sessions to swim or even ride .. but its not going to happen.  Honestly if I had to choose and it was tri or ludus .. ludus would win hands down without any hesitation. (My coach is cringing right now as she reads this) … on a positive note – I was going to do four, but I held back. 😉

Which brings me to  …

You have heard me talk about it A LOT and it’s no secret that I will be a Ludian for life, here is a glimpse of “This is how we Ludus”

As Joe says – “At Ludus Magnus burpees are a metaphor for life, you get knocked down to the ground, you get straight back up with a jump and a clap” Not a bad way to live life!

Till next time