Courtenay Brown

That title was a bit of a mouthful! The race was supposed to happen on December 6, a week before I arrived in Honolulu. But, lucky for me and Ben, they had to postpone it to today.

First, to clarify: most people think of “biathlon” as a winter sport involving skiing and shooting. In Hawaii, however, there’s not a lot of winter sport action, so “biathlon” means run-then-swim (as opposed to “aquathlon”, which is swim-then-run). Today’s race consisted of a 5k run and 1k swim in Honolulu’s Ala Moana Beach Park.

Preparation for the race was pretty simple, shoes plus goggles plus cap and suit, and my goals were also simple: have fun and get in a good hard workout. Also I really wanted to race so I could wear my new Splish suit, which was awesome, and my only dark-tint goggles, which are i’m-so-cool swedes. The goggles were not quite as much of a success as the swimsuit, but the sun was so low in the sky and so bright that I’m not sure I would have been any better off with fancy goggles.

The nitty-gritty of the race: the 5k went fine, I didn’t see any other women once the race started and Ben disappeared with the fast kids pretty much instantly, so I just ran with some guys. I felt like I was going soo hard but they didn’t look like they were going particularly fast so I’m sure I wasn’t either. My time for the run was 19:44, a minute slower than my best 5k time at a sprint triathlon. Yet I’m really pleased with this starting-point for the year – even though it shows I have a lot of work to do to get to where I was last summer, the fact that I ran it under 20 minutes without any pain indicates that I am indeed over the “hump” of recovery from my achilles injury. I feel so relieved!

Then I took my sweet time in transition because OMG I was breathing so hard, and aren’t races supposed to be over after the run? My body felt confused. But I did get into the water and start swimming. It was a pretty windy day out there, so windy that they couldn’t place a sighting buoy at the turn-around and I had a hard time figuring out where to go. I got frustrated with my tired arms and haphazard path, but during my far-too-frequent pauses to get my bearings, I could see that a lot of other people were having trouble too. On the way back I felt good about my pace and my form but couldn’t see a THING due to the sun, as it turns out I added several hundred meters to my swim. Argh! But like I said, everyone else was having similar problems, and even with a 24-minute “1k” swim I still hung onto my lead in the women’s race! Ben won the men’s race.

Additional good news is the Magic Island Biathlon on January 17 is held on the same course. I’m excited to get back out and do it all again! There are a lot of great things about Hawaiian biathlons – the short hard efforts are perfect for jumpstarting my system in the midst of all my slower base training, it’s super easy to prepare for a race that doesn’t involve any cycling and bike parts and bike stickers and whatnot, plus I think it’s really good to shuffle sports around. In triathlon, I have gotten used to swim-bike-running hard, in that order. I know it’s going to hurt but I’m familiar with the sensations. Races that challenge me to hurt in a way that’s different than I am accustomed to are great for my mental toughness as well as my fitness.