Thursday, July 2, 2009

Ukrainian and Europian races.

It took me a while to recover from Strongman triathlon. Mostly I was tired from too much traveling last month. In two weeks after Japan I had Ukrainian team relay championship and Ukrainian cup on a sprint distance. It was still cold in our east Europian countries and we had to swim in the swimming pool at first day of the race. The competitions were divided in 3 days: next day after swimming race we had to do sprint distance (bike+run) and the last day of the event we did team relay super sprint (bike+run). During the swim meet I started feel tooth pain, I just fixed one a few days before the race. I could handle the pain during the day, but at night..... I think it was worst night in my life so far. Next morning my coach drove me to a hospital where I had a surgery in my mouth . I started feel better after that, although I couldn't compete in that same day. But next day I did a super sprint and did it pretty well, as a team we got second place. After I came home I finaly had a time to train without traveling and racing for a next, at least, 3 weeks. But my health wasn't good on 100 % after taking antibiotics for the mouth healing.
           
 I got well before my next triathlon race, which was in Senec, Slovakia.
 I had a crazy idea (as usualy:)) I wanted to do 2 races in one weekend. It's okay if it 2 sprints, or sprint and Olympic distance race, but I figured out it's not that good when you do one sprint triathlon in one country, then drive 200 km to another country, then sleep in a tent and when do Half Ironman next morning..... Not the best idea. Anyway I did good at sprint distance  and I actually felt okay next day during the swim and run, but on the bike I found out that my saddle is too low and the shifter doesn't work well (after trasporting the bike in a car). I still finished though and it was Ironman 70.3 in St. Polten. 
For some reason I started loosing a motivation to train, I guess I just were tired and I still had two more races ahead of me before I could take a small brake: Olympic and super sprint triathlon in Ukraine and half distance race in Poland. Didn't feel good during Ukrainian races, but triathlon in Poland came out very well in spite of unlucky trip to this east Euripian country ( We had some troubles crossing a border in minivan with a stranger driver. It's a long story and not very funny). But even with all not very nice moments it was a good journey , we had Ukrainian team in Poland, included Viktor Zyemtsev, two new in Long course triathlon athletes: Anton Blohin and Galina Makedon and one more guy from west of Ukraine. So, it was fun and all of us had a good race: 1st and 2d female overal; 1st, 2d and 10th overal male.(results)

And right now I am back to US, training and preparing for the second part of my season and Ironman races.