Day 23

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Bit of a rush job for me as I woke quite late, and had been planning to skip the sports day and do my training in the morning but, as a last minute plan, I decided to go along with the others to watch Maia’s school sports day, and this proved to be really good fun! As there are so many small schools around the area, they all get together to have a massive sports day together at the local sports stadium. Imagine 300 odd kids doing all sorts of running and athletics, shot put, high jump, long jump, ages 5-13 and you’ll have some idea! Not quite as chaotic as it sounds, but pretty close! Anyway, that was a very fun few hours cheering Maia on at some of the events, but, sadly, training called, and so we left so I could come back, rest and re-charge a bit before heading out to ride. 2 hour ride, 1.5 hour run. I was still trying to work out the distances and so on for the training rides, as they are out and back, rather than loops, and so I need to account for terrain and also the wind direction as this makes a massive impact on how long a ride can take. For example, for this ride, I rode for an hour, which took me from Inglewood to Medway and, upon turning around, I got back to Inglewood in half an hour! This meant I had 30 minutes of riding to make up, and so had to twiddle around town for a bit, which, for some reason, just seemed to totally drain me of all energy, so by the time I got back home ready to go out for the run, it was pretty obvious to me that there wasn’t going to be a lot of running happening!! I was shot to bits, but decided I have to tough it out and at least go out, so I basically went out and walked for an hour and a half. There was a bit of jogging in there, but mostly it was a 5.5 mile walk. I was struggling with that by the time I got back, legs were like lead, no energy, just feeling rubbish. However, I finished my training as planned, as it was a time based, not pace based session, so I’ve got work to do on the running side of things. 3 weeks to the first half ironman race, and that’ll be the real decider of whether things are on track or not.. Today was as much fruit as I wanted, along with soup, so I’d had a fruit salad and some soup in the morning, taken soup with me to the sports day in a flask, so I was ready, but it still left me feeling pretty empty and I was knackered by the time I got to bed!

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Photos

what a view
the view from the grandstand of the events

maia
finishing in the top 4 to get through to the next race, despite it not looking like it from this picture

maia 2
and happy with her race

maia 3
'discus'

maia 4
being flung very well!

tahlia
not sure what i said to get a tongue out and bared stomach!!

tahlia
looking thoughful

tahlia and helen
enjoying the sunshine