by Dominic » Mon May 09, 2011 6:50 pm
[quote="Lucyap"]How was the swim?
Lucy.
Suprisingly just over 47 minutes. I say suprisingly for those that don't know I was not confident about the swim. Despite having a practice in open water last Wednesday, I had spent most of the week worrying about it. Got to the event nice and early and did all the things that need to be done, register, rack bike etc. I mentioned to my wife the night before that the problem with doing triathlons is the potential to forget something, thankfully I didn't. I had quick chat with Nigel and Chris Costiff before the start and waited to be off, at 7.20am, in the third wave for the slower swimmers. Felt good just after the horn went off. Tried to get on another swimmer's feet to draught and found myself being left behind. This dented my confidence somewhat and I had a real 'I can't do this moment' and had to pull myself together. I then, because mainly lack of confidence spent the first 600m alternating breast stroke and freestyle. The breast stroke helping with sighting (must get some prescription goggles). The rest of the 1300m felt like an eternity. There was a shorter race starting at 8am. I could have sworn I heard them start when I had 600m to go. Was thinking, not good, this will be even slower than the hour I set myself. Imagine my surprise when I was approaching the swim exit to see them set off. Tried to manfully step onto the landing helped by a young blonde lady and managed to crumple to the ground then run the wrong way up transition
Yipee the worst bit over, or so I thought.
Onto the bike complete with TT helmet. I had given myself 2.5 hours for this in order to save some running legs. It was bliss, a tailwind for the first half an hour. It felt like I was passing people all the time. If you have seen footage of Ironman events with lines of cyclists, that was what it was like with me passing them all. TTer's amongst you, we have great marshalls in our sport. The ones at this event did not seem to appreciate that when you are coming to a turn/roundabout at 25mph+ you need to know more that 5 yards before you get there where you are going
The course was made up of mainly flat and windy, on the return leg, wide A and B roads. Except for a diversion that we had been warned previously off. This turned out to be a car wide, rutted, gritty track. If I had punctured there I would not have been happy and I did hear comments like' I would have been better on my mountainbike'. I only got passed by one person and that was about 5 miles from the end. He was riding a Giant Trinity with Zipp wheels and Powertap. He was going fast and obviously something had happened. I spoke to him afterwards. He was so far in front when he got to one of the turns there was no marshall and he had gone the wrong way. He ended up doing a 130k instead of 92, and I still got passed by him
He reckoned he was on for about a 2 hour ride for the correct distance. My time was just over 2hours 33 mins.
Got off the bike for the half marathon and my legs felt shredded but nowhere near how back there were at the Ballbuster. Slowed myself down a bit at the start and noticed a sharp pain in my left side down by my stomach. Not good. After about two miles I was walking. When I wasn't walking I was running like I was Jimmy Saville (now then now then). Got passed after 40 mins by Chris Costiff (who went onto win her age group). This helped me to focus on running again and I managed to do most of the last half running altough if felt like the slowest run ever, I was suprisingly passing people. Eventually the end came and through the finish, nicely cheered by Chris Costiff and a small crowd. I felt suprsingly underwhelmed by it all but the longer it goes the more satisfied I seem. I can see that the Outlaw in July is going to be extremely hard. ~Run time just over 1 hour 55 mins.
Just checked the results and I was 89th out of 192 finishers and more surprisingly 10th in my age group. I was 191st in the swim, 26th in the bike leg and 116th on the run