After a week of rain, I wasn’t looking forward to this Sunday morning race at Ardingly College, but was pleasantly surprised, if a little tired, to see glorious sunshine poking through the curtains as the clock reminded me it really was only 5am!
This is the 2nd time I have done this event and I don’t have good memories from last year as my running legs deserted me so I wanted to do better! This is a longer standard triathlon than normal with the bike being almost 30miles rather than 24 and the run 11km rather than 10km so it all adds up to a tough event.
The water was ”refreshing” but after a brief acclimatision period, kindly gifted to us by the organisers, I was definitely “refreshed” and very keen to get going. Swimming is not my strongest leg, a tradition I continued in this event, but importantly I finished strongly and quicker than last year.
On to the bike… This was to be the first event I would be trying bare-foot transitions for both swim to bike and bike to run, and for the bike starting with the shoes already attached to the bike. I’d been practicing these in the run up to the event, but clearly need to practice a bit more as a little bit of muppety followed before I was off. Not slick by any means, but at least I didn’t fall off (!) and with practice I’m sure this will lead to faster transitions in the future.
The ride itself was great for me - 8 minutes quicker than last year, so my new wheels were definitely worth it!
Finally the run - a slightly tedious 8 laps of the College playing fields, fields with an energy sapping incline for the first half, not really offset by the corresponding downward half of the loop. My legs certainly felt it as the laps ticked by. Lap counting was helped by the issue of an elastic band for your wrist at the start of each lap. By lap 4, the circulation to my hand was albeit stopped when I came up with the (genius?!) tactic of starting to hand them back each lap, so when I had none left I knew it was time to finish!
I shared a sprint-finish with one of the male competitors, a sprint I conceded (honest!), to spare him the experience of being “chicked”. How kind was that?!
In the end I finished almost 14 minutes quicker than last year and finished 2nd in my age group and 5th lady overall so not a bad mornings work, although I was absolutely exhausted and spent the afternoon asleep in the garden.