Back in the game after a year! First triathlon race since 2023

By Orangy -

 Woahhhhhh it's been a while since I updated this blog! 

I just saw that the last blog update was in January 2024 O_o All I can say is "life happened". 

In 2024, we spent the first half of the year in Portugal. I received the Fulbright award to conduct research and teach in Lisbon for 4 months. We ran several trail races when we were there including the Azores Ultra Blue Island, which I considered the most beautiful race I have done to date. Chef Pat also ran his first trail race there (10K). I am so proud of him :)

Then, we were really busy adjusting back to life in NE Ohio after we came back to the US in July. Many things happened that kept me busy from training and updating the blog. I ran my 6th marathon at the Akron marathon in September and did a couple of local trail races here and there but nothing long or eventful. 

While I was in Portugal, FOMO led me to sign up for IM Ottawa (the new venue in 2025) in August 2025, and I kind of regretted it. I took a break from triathlon and training in 2024 because we traveled a lot and spent 5 months in another country. It's impossible for me to keep up with the training. So, now I am pretty out of shape and rarely have time to train. 

However, I know that in order to keep me motivated to train for the Ironman, I needed to sign up for some races before that. I do not keep up with the local races anymore but one day I saw Medina indoor tri  event on Facebook and decided to sign up for it. 

The week leading up to the race day was very very long for me. So many things happened at work and I was really busy. On the race morning, I even debated sitting this one out because mentally and physically I was not ready. 




But I made it to the Medina Rec center about 30 minutes before my wave started. Because of the limited space in the pool, there were only 12 participants in each wave and, if I recall correctly, there were about 7-8 waves total. I thought to myself "This is another training day and it's a good opportunity to check where my base fitness really is at". 

Every discipline was slow but I believe that my weakest sport right now is the bike. I need to bike more... Surprisingly, I did better than I thought on the run (faster than I expected or my normal pace). 




Well, consider that this is my first race in 1.5 years and I barely trained for the race, I am pretty happy with the results :)



Sydney 

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