Kate & Michelle
Last Saturday (22nd October), I found myself in the
Sorrento Challenge as part of a team with my friend Kate.
The
Sorrento Challenge is a bit like a triathlon starting with a swim and ending with a run, but instead of cycling there's paddling in between. Kate wanted to swim and run, and I've never paddled in a race so I was happy to team up and give it a go. We have 2 races together over the next 2 weekends so we've named ourselves "Just 4 Fun".
Swim Start
The weather was a bit overcast and it was a very warm day with annoying flies. With shark attacks in the news lately, we made a bit of a joke about it being perfect conditions for
sharks but laughed it off because the race didn't start until midday and everyone knows that
sharks only attack at dawn (!) Looking back I remember that comment - this was the day of the fatal shark attack at Rottnest and it happened around 1.30pm.
The swim course was a little unexpected, it was posted as a 1.2k swim, but involved a swim down
the beach, run back up
the beach, and do the swim all over again and a run to transition. Kate said it was exhausting but she seemed to keep the competitors at bay.
Kate on the "swim" leg of the race
I then did the paddle leg - 7.5k. I've been paddling here a few times and the conditions were deceptive. It looked calm but once we hit the water we struggled against a bit of breeze and some side-swell. I found it much harder going than usual - and it was so defeating to be over-taken by all the fast fibreglass boats! But I put in my best effort on the day and was just happy to have had the opportunity to be out on the water (instead of taking my kids to dance lessons and doing the vegie shoppping, thanks Dave I owe you one!).
After the paddle leg, we were nearly in last place it seemed, but hard to tell because the Open Teams had a longer course than the juniors who made up about 2/3 of the field. Kate made up the lost ground on the run however. The course was very tough, with about 500m of each 3.5k lap in the soft sand but she smashed it!
We stayed for the presentation and couldn't believe it when they called out our team for 2nd place medal in our category! How did we manage that?!
Our Results