Raquel's 40 Race Challenge

The anticipation in the run up to this event was huge and here's why. After completing my first ever triathlon two weeks earlier which went so well, I was hugely excited for the next one and couldn't wait. But semi-disaster struck a week after Southwater. My biggest fear, injury, raised its ugly head. I really didn't think this would be a problem so early on in the challenge. I had hip ache, knee ache and ankle ache and the worry of them all by event day gave me a headache! These are all old injuries of mine that I thought I had in hand and the devastation of them returning put a black cloud over me in the week running up to the event. I was literally swinging in roundabouts with what to do, compete or drop out? My heart said go for it and my head was obviously telling me the opposite. I left the decision right up until the morning of this triathlon and when I woke up, I felt ok (well as ok as you can feel with an alarm screaming at you 5am in the morning!) so I went for

 Event 1 of 40 - Well the day finally arrived for my first event of this challenge, after all the hard work of planning, organising, preparing, exercising and worry the fun bit was about to happen – yay! Southwater Relay is a slightly bonkers and fun and relatively short distance team triathlon set in the stunning backdrop of Southwater Country Park. Each team consists of three people or legs and each person completes the whole course and then tags the next person who then completes the course again and so on. I was the middle leg, leg number 2. The course is a 400m lake swim, an 18km bike around the roads nearby to the park and a 3.8km run. My team was chosen by Britri which is the triathlon club that my family belong to (mainly for my son as he competes in kids tris) but they have been fantastic supporting me and giving me advice. There were 30 of us from Britri so 10 teams and I’d never met my team mates before the day! A race report from Owen (leg 1) the previous wee

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8WpFGeP87cM&sns=fb Even though I felt elation at completing my first event of this challenge, and the shere exhaustion has been the sole reason up till now that the report hasn’t been posted yet. Yet tonight and the last 24hrs Klaire has been all I have thought about. I miss her so very much and cannot believe she is not here. I need my sister. I love this tribute video to her, I watch it every time I need to feel close to her. It doesn’t do her justice. God give me strength to understand what isn’t understandable. I cannot get over her passing. A person so loved and loving - one day I must come to terms with this. In the mean time, sorry for the delay in telling you what an amazing day Southwater was. I never imagined I’d actually do anything like that - that’s Klaire for you, the cause of something unexpected. It’s just brought a lot of emotions, at least I feel I’m going somewhere with them rather than sadness for sadness sake x