For the first time, I was unable to properly complete a race. While I knew I had not had the world’s best preparation, I didn’t think the Sprint Tri at Kurnell would go like this…

So I don’t love swimming. I’m very bad at it. I need to work hard to retain sufficient swim fitness to finish any triathlon I ever do. On this morning, I was feeling that I had done OK, I had been doing enough swimming. But the day dawned pretty cold, definitely a wetsuit swim. I had been a loooong time since I had swum in a wetsuit, but I dragged mine out and put it on. A bit snug, but there you go and a sleeveless suit so pretty easy to swim in right?

Wrong. The water was very cold (for my cold water-hating body), but the conditions were otherwise OK and I was swimming well bobbing around on the surface as you do in a wetsuit… And then… “why can’t I breathe?”… OK, slow down, do some backstroke, take some deep breathes… nope not helping… maybe unzip the wetsuit… oh bloody hell the zipper is stuck now… can I keep going?… sure but at this stop-start rate and feeling like this?… so after a few more feeble attempts the arm went up in the air to get taken in. Soooo embarrassing… and it took them 5min to get the zipper unstuck so that wasn’t just me…

Anyway, I got to land and got checked out. Perfectly fine. What was that about? So not wanting to waste all the effort and energy put into getting to Kurnell at 5am, I wander back. Rejoin after the last swimmer and do the bike and run. Which weren’t great as my chest still felt a little strange, but such a beautiful location so still sort of enjoyable. Finish. Write that one off to experience. Not sure what happened. And really really hope that it never happens again!!! Any thoughts or tips much appreciated!