34

Tis the season to be racing…

Raced Blenheim yesterday as my opening race of the season and considering my last few months have been injury-plagued, I was pretty pleased to place fifth in the women’s elite race. As Stuart said in his Blenheim blog (BTW, congrats on a great victory Stu), it was bitterly cold yesterday which was always going to make racing a bit more ‘interesting’. My lips were totally blue pre-race and I could barely feel my fingers, so from about 8am onwards I was just dreaming of a hot bubble bath.

The swim was carnage and I seemed to get mixed up in a right old boxing match. The first transition was quite disastrous too, so once out on the bike course I knew I had some serious work to do.

It was the first time I’d used my Lightweight wheels aboard the Focus Cayo and BLOODY HELL they are out of this world! A few blokes in transition were literally drooling over them. OK, so riding carbon wheels in the pi$$ing rain on a course which can be sketchy at the best of times isn’t conducive to uber-fast bike splits. I was pleased to bike strongly and intelligently in testing conditions and come out with the fastest bike split and into T2 in the lead pack.

The run @ Blenheim yesterday reminded me of the run at Vancouver last year. That is, I couldn’t feel my feet at all, and it took a cursory glance at the ground to check there were still feet attached to the ends of my legs, such was the extent of numbness.

The last few months have seen me barely running because of plantar fasciitis. It’s only been since mid-April onwards that I’ve been consistently running so I was quite pleased to make it through the 5k yesterday pain-free. Today the dreaded PF knows it’s been raced on, but I’m rolling a frozen Coke bottle under it as I type in the hope it’ll feel improved tomorrow and I’ll be able to resume training OK this week then race Windsor next Sunday. Goddam injuries, gurrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Injury prevention is the key and making my body strong enough to withstand the training I want to put it through. Last week, I went to a new massage therapist, Rob King in West Swindon, who made what I think could be a breakthrough discovery for me – my right leg is longer than my left! This could explain a few things so I’m hopeful that with a heel raise and continued injury prevention work I’ll be right where I want to be later in the year. Patience is a virtue…

Thanks to all my family & friends for the support out on the course yesterday and to all the people who shouted “Come on, Wiggle!”. Wearing the Wiggle logo always gets a few good shouts ;-)

Happy training & racing
EK

For full results follow the link below
www.triathlonresults.co.uk/

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Athlete Diaries, Emma-Kate Lidbury. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.