About

Updated on 8/12/2013

Hello, my name is Zuzka and this blog will be primarily about my triathlon, cycling and running adventures.

I did my first triathlon in September 2006 and even though I almost froze during the swim (the water temperature was in high 50s or lower 60s (F) and I didn't have a wetsuit at the time), I instantly got hooked :-) I've been doing 5-8 triathlons every year since then, including 6 half-ironman distance triathlons with a 5h 15min PR at Rev3 Half Ironman 2013.

In October 2011 I did my first marathon. It was the first time I really followed a structured training plan and the result was that I ran MUCH better than I expected (3:35:07 - I expected 3:45 at the best) and almost qualified for Boston Marathon (missed the qualifying time cut-off by only 7 seconds!). This inspired me to try another marathon 4 months later. This time I ran it in 3:29:51, which qualified me for Boston (and I achieved my goal of running under 3:30 :-)). My third marathon was a less glorious experience. I had high expectations, but having skipped about 25% of my planned training (which was not that ambitious anyway since I was training for triathlons "on the side"), I didn't achieve my pretty unrealistic 'A goal' of running under 3:20 or even my B goal of running under 3:25. I still got a PR, but not by much: 3:27:47. Plus, this course was flatter than the one of my second marathon and the weather was much nicer in October (around 60F) than during my second marathon in February (30-40F and windy). So obviously, I was not very happy about my performance, but at least I learned that I cannot expect better marathon performance without proper training. So for my next marathon (Boston Marathon 2013) I followed my training plan almost perfectly. And it paid off! Got a new PR of 3:12:07 - 8min below my goal time.

Surviving the marathon gave me the necessary reassurance that I could some day finish an Ironman. So I signed up for my first Ironman (Ironman Switzerland) this year. I wanted to document my training and pre-Ironman racing on this blog but in the end I didn't feel like blogging, so I didn't. However, I wrote a race recap of my Ironman, so I'll at least post that :-) There might be more posts about training, racing etc in the future but there is no guarantee. Sorry about that!

Thanks for stopping by :-)

P.S. In case you didn't get the meaning of this title (pretty improbable if you are a triathlete), it was inspired by my favorite former professional triathlete, Chrissie Wellington. I'd love to be as fast as her one day! :-)