A Rare Rainy Day

Usually, the rain in Brisbane follows a typical tropical pattern with generally sunny weather interrupted by brief but intense rainfall, often in the form of an afternoon thunderstorm. However, today it has been raining steadily all morning much more like a late November Seattle day. Now it's past lunch time and it hasn't stopped long enough even for me to ride my bike to the gym. I guess it's good opportunity to catch up on the old blog, so here's what we've been up to.

Erik (126) passing the competition
Last weekend we went to Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast for the triathlon festival. It was quite the family affair with Erik and his friend Max participating in the kids event on Saturday morning. Erik managed the 100 meter swim, 4 km bike and 500 meter run with ease and even declared that it was"fun! fun! fun!" The kids events aren't timed, but it seems like he has improved considerably since his first event a year ago. He didn't waste any time in transition getting his shoes on after the swim and seemed to be cycling at a much faster pace than previously.

Although I usually do triathlons as an individual, this year I organized a team since I knew I wouldn't be able to do any cycle training pretty much the whole month of January because of Heron Nationals and our trips to Hawaii and Sydney. Being on a team was actually a lot of fun and much less stressful than doing the whole thing by myself! Also it allowed us each to train specifically according to our strengths. Sharon, a friend who organizes the swimming program at Erik's school swam a strong open water leg while another friend, Bec, who cycles a lot and whose husband was racing as well, blazed through the 40 km bike leg. The 10 km run suited me since that seems to be my best area performance-wise (my time was 48 minutes for 10 km, not stellar but respectable) and was the most convenient to train for when travelling. (Yes, it's all about me!)

The weekend ended up being a very social affair since we all stayed in the same resort complex just across from transition and hosted a team pasta dinner on Saturday night. Mark, although not racing, kept busy going for a ride Saturday morning and watching the professional cycling events Saturday afternoon. He was also an integral part of our support team, watching Erik and six month old Emily (Bec's baby) while we were out on the race course. All our efforts paid off as our team, Mums in Motion, placed 8th out of 54. I was so pleased with our results that I'm already thinking of what our next event might be.


Here's the view of "Transition" from our balcony. How many dollars worth of road bikes do you think there are? We estimated that at about $2,000-3,000 average per bike and 2,973 entries that makes for between almost $6,000,000 to $9,000,000. It's a good thing they had security gaurds.