After having seen a super physio in April and she re-arranged most of my upper body, Outlaw Half was going to be my first real test as to whether or not it made any different to my knee!  So, I was quietly hopeful but still keeping mostly realistic and preparing myself for the worst, especially as I knew I was under-trained and had had the cold from hell the week before and I was still struggling to shake the last of it off.   Race morning and partly thanks for a party in the hotel and parlty due to pre-race nerves, I got to the site with pretty much no sleep and wishing I’d taken more clothes (always forget how cold it is at 4.30am!).  But transition was setup up and I chatted to a few people, got the wetsuit on and it was time to get into the water.

I just took the swim easy, tried to avoid the masses and focus on keeping form and came out bang on the time I thought it would be.  It was fun in transition as everything was numb from standing around in the cold for 2 hours earlier and then the swim, but managed to get myself sorted and decided to throw on the jersey I’d packed last minute but left the gloves on the ground thinking I’d warm up quickly – a decision I’d later regret!   The bike course was pretty flat but kept myself in check (the motto “you’ve still got to run after!” kept going around in my head!), and while we had been warned about the awful road surface I found it no worse (if not slightly better!), than the usual Surrey roads I ride on so no problems there (except the last 2 miles but more on that in a second).  The downside of a mostly flat course though is that there were only 2 sections of about 5-10 seconds where I free-wheeled, the rest you are pushing the whole way, and there were several sections where it was miles of a long straight road on the slightest of gradients with the wind in your face which was energy & motivation sapping.

The decision to leave the gloves in transition was based on the thought “I’ll warm up soon enough” – that turned out to be about mile 45 before I could use my left hand for anything and the right was only just usable enough to grip my bottle and change gears! Hence it meant at the feed stations attempting to grab bottles on the go resulted in just knocking them away as my hands wouldn’t work enough, so I physically had to stop to collect new bottles and the volunteers had to peel the banana’s for me as well (thankfully I had bars cut-up and teeth can pull gel tops, although trying to squeeze gels out was quite difficult as well).

Fairly uneventful bike course otherwise, well until the last 2 miles when the road surface was awful, lots of speed bumps, some of it gravel track and the rest was play dodge the too many to count potholes!  I think it was good though as you had to ease up on speed for safety so the legs got a bit of a break, hence when I went out on the run I felt surprisingly fresh and strong.  The first few miles of the run were good, then I thought my knee was twitching around mile 5 so had a good walk break and that seemed to do the trick as I set off running again feeling strong and the knee was much happier.  That was until about mile 8 when my stomach started to turn a bit and by mile 9 it was in pieces, hence a lot of walking and several stops of hunching over trying not to bring the contents of my stomach up.

Somewhere near mile 10 was a feed station so I decided to try a cup of coke, and by around mile 11 that seemed to have done the trick and I was able to run again, so another cup of coke at the last feed station at about mile 11.5 and that got rid of the last of the upset stomach and it was a strong run up to the finish, where I was all smiles as my knee had held up for the first time ever at half distance – and then I promptly burst into tears at the emotion of it all!!  But they were definitely tears of joy 🙂