I finished my first iron-distance triathlon last Sunday 26th June and I need to write everything down otherwise I’ll forget it so this post is really for me and I figured I may as well share it. It was an amazing(ly long) day and is certainly the thing I’m most proud of. Nearly everything I’ve done since last Christmas has centred around this event including work (I trained at lunchtime and could be often seen pouring food down my throat in the kitchen desperately trying to back to my desk on time),  my social life, trips away, food and just pretty much all of my time. I loved the preparation, luckily I never got injured and was only properly ill once back in April with a chest infection.

I came back to Ireland a little over 2 weeks before the event to really embrace the taper and lo and behold, the Monday before the event I woke up with swollen glands in my throat. I thought it wouldn’t develop into anything serious if I gargled salt and water and took it easy after my 60 minute gentle run that morning. On Tuesday it was pretty painful so I took a Lemsip and an ibuprofen to get me through my brick (bike & run) session and headed off down to Clare to visit my aunt and granny but booked a doctor’s appointment for the following morning just in case. Sure enough I needed antibiotics and because I’d left it a bit long the tonsillitis had become quite aggressive so the doctor prescribed me a very high dose to blast it; which just blasted me. I spent all of Thursday afternoon and evening vomiting as my body couldn’t hack the level of drug in my system. Dark times were experienced and for a while I couldn’t see myself being fit to race on Sunday. On Friday I still felt pretty awful and couldn’t eat so in the afternoon I went to the race expo to register and try to soak up a bit of atmosphere in an attempt to get my body geared up. It worked a bit, the walking around got my appetite up and I managed a cheese baguette and when I got home a plate of rice and potatoes.  So I was back to myself a bit and feeling reasonably well. Saturday was more of an improvement and although I knew I wasn’t peaking the way I should be I believed I could get through it. All ambitions of finishing in 13 hours were let go and I knew I should only be trying to finish it.

On Saturday night I got into bed at 8.30pm and stayed there until 3.30am – I slept between 10pm and 2am roughly. Then it was up, shower, coffee, Weetabix, beetroot shot and off to the swim start. The swim is my favourite bit and I was pumped to get started. It was a mass start so all 350 of us got into the water and floated around waiting for the start horn. I’d moved myself up to the front and planned to just hold onto the feet in front of me as they’d changed the course at the last minute and I couldn’t see the buoys where we were headed. 6.20am and bang off we went! I stuck it out in a big group of men all hitting and kicking each other and managed to get to the first buoy unscathed and continued out to the second where the group broke apart a bit and we had more space and less thumping. The wind and tide were coming against us on the way out which made it hard to sight and tricky to breathe without drinking but I really enjoyed it. A left turn at the second buoy brought us across the bay to the third where we turned back in for home and surfed with the tide the whole way back in. The course was two laps and the second was even more fun as I wasn’t getting beat around the head by a group of MAMILs. I was out of the water in 59 minutes and bounced up the jetty for a 600m dash to transition. My legs were like jelly – I’ve never felt so disorientated after a swim but the distance and the waves must have turned me all mushy!

Into transition and I find out I’m the fifth woman in – delighted with myself! Quick dry, change, chamois cream application and I’m out to grab my bike and start the long slog out to the Burren. The wind had picked up by this point and for the first 3km to Oranmore I had a glorious tail wind. The first 60km of the bike passed quite uneventfully, no real hills, pretty protected from the wind and I was holding an average of 24kph which had been my goal before I decided to stop having a goal! I took this opportunity to fuel loads. I was eating cliff bars, gels, snickers and drinking water mixed with Nuun sodium tablets. At 60km the terrain got a bit hillier so my overall pace slowed and at 65km I felt a twinge at the top of my left calf. I couldn’t ride with my heel down – the only way I could keep going pain free was to keep the heel up slightly which wasn’t ideal but I thought it would loosen out after a while. At 90km, after the Corkscrew Hill it started to rain and I turned into the wind. The next 30km were just miserable. My pace dropped to 20kph and I was frozen. All I was thinking about were my jam sandwiches which I was planning to eat when the rain stopped or at 120km, whichever came first! I pulled in at the 120km aid station for a toilet stop and realised when I got off the bike that I was in trouble with my calf – I couldn’t put much weight on my left leg. I took two Neurofen, tried not to think about it too much and got back on the bike with a jam sandwich in hand. At this point the boredom and I suppose a level of fatigue was setting in and I started speaking out loud…..to my jam sandwich. I said hello to cows I passed and I sang songs. I was cycling North at this point so the Westerly wind wasn’t bothering me anymore. Once I passed Ballyvaughan at around 130km I had a tail wind and cruised the 30km to Kilcolgan in an hour. The last 20km are a bit of a blur but I know I found them tough as I was facing into the wind again and the closer I got to Galway the sooner I’d have to get off the bike and test this calf of mine.

I jump off the bike and hobble into transition with my run bag. I was in transition for 9 minutes – my brain just wasn’t firing at full capacity and I was struggling with the fact that my running top was absolutely soaked through as the bags had been left out in the rain. Eventually I decide to run in my rain jacket as I didn’t want to be too cold and couldn’t handle putting the wet top on. Two more Neurofen and I’m ready to start the run with a bottle of Lucozade sport and a Nutella sandwich in hand – it’s the little things!

The pain in my calf is manageable and I can run without limping as long as I keep my pace at 10kph. After the first 9km though the pain intensified and started to wonder if I was in serious trouble. I have to slow down a lot at this stage to keep running but I manage to keep going without breaking into a walk. After a while the painkillers started to kick in and I could up the pace to try to catch my friend Ciara who was a bit in front of me. We ran the next 25km together which was amazing – it would have been so much more difficult mentally to have done it without her. The run was physically very taxing due to the pain in my leg but I never felt that I wouldn’t finish. By the end we were taking a 1 minute walk break every 5 minutes which made everything seem more manageable.

Eventually, 13 hours and 27 minutes after the start horn went off in Oranmore that morning, I crossed the finish line and for a short moment I thought I might cry from the barrel of emotion that hit me once I’d finally stopped moving. That wore off pretty quickly though when I saw the pizza that was presented to me by my amazing friends.

Adrenaline is a powerful thing and for about an hour I felt no pain or real tiredness; I was just so happy! After a while though, as the painkillers and the excitement wore off I started to feel the effects of the day and when I sat down in a pub on Quay Street with my friends I crashed entirely. I made my way gingerly down the stairs to the toilets and was quite sick. My brother came to collect me and I was in bed at midnight – horizontal has never felt so good! I was still a bit buzzy though so didn’t sleep until around 1.30am and woke again at 6.00am, unable to go back to sleep but also unable to walk. I texted my dad who I could hear moving around downstairs – “Can you bring me water? And crutches!”

To cut a long story short re the pain in my calf – I had something called a Baker’s Cyst in the back of my left knee which started to leak during the race, taking up space that my calf muscle needed to function properly. I spent the Monday and Tuesday after the race on crutches and am now getting physio to get the leg fully mobilised again before I go to South America on my travels.