Why triathlon - Niinas addition

Jyrki has said almost all of it in the previous post. Some things I can add from my side.

I always liked training in a group. Finding a swim practice that suited us both and where it was possible to take Emma with us to swim and play with her friends while we trained, that was good luck! Immediately from beginning it was clear that I feel like a fish in the water and my technique looks completely fine. But for some strange reason it didn't work. I were the slowest swimmer in the group. It took me all the season until somewhere in the end of spring after I checked all parts of my technique piece by piece, I found what was wrong. My hands were too weak and my stroke looked correct but had no power. When summer came I still had not enough power in my hands, but shirts sleeves started to feel more tight and my speed was increasing. And by the time of Kuopio triathlon I managed to improve my swimming enough to cut of 4,5 minutes from last years result. And I know that I can still improve! So I am really waiting for our swim practices to start.

Less lucky I was with running. I knew it intuitively that my knees "don't like" certain things. But inspired by the new plans, I rushed into marathon school without listening to my body. Well, I think, it was 17th of March, when I run my last run according to the marathon school plan. After running for around 5 hours and 30-40 km a week for half a year, my knees got painful so suddenly that I had to interrupt my last training in the middle of it. Well, I went to a physiotherapist, got a personal exercise program and started to do it every evening. And no running. The rehabilitation brought no result and on the 2nd of May I went to knee MRI. There were found a lot of bad stuff, and I got a prohibition to run. 5 weeks before the half triathlon I started to run. 15 minutes at a time after cycling, once a week. And I went to the half-triathlon with a decision to try to run but being ready to interrupt.

Now I know that I will not try marathon or full triathlon anymore, being Jyrkis support in these events, is enough for me. But yes, I definitely want to compete in Olympic and half-triathlon. It is really addicting!

- Niina