English
Last weekend was the South West Tri Academy training day for the IRC’s (Inter Regional Championships.) This will be my first one, I’m quite excited! It was an early start for us as we had to travel down to Devon. After the previous hot week it was quite a fresh morning but I was looking forward to the open water swim, maybe it would wake me up! However , the Watersports lake wasn’t quite the azure blue lagoon that I had pictured. We had just over an hour’s session in the water where we worked on swimming off each other’s feet, sighting the buoys (useful after my last Aquathlon!) and changing leaders in the group. Throughout the day South West Academy Coaches Will (Newton) and Andy (Bullock) gave us lots of tips – all of which will be useful for the event next weekend, if we can remember them all!
The final element of the swimming training was a long swim up to a massive yellow buoy, back and round the (duck) island, up the muddy launch slipway, then a transition out of our wetsuits. This went well for me, but once I had my wetsuit off I was freezing! ..and covered in green slime – nice! Just time for a shower and hot drink before we were whisked off to a Secret airfield in the middle of nowhere…
Warmed up and changed after the half hour ‘power-nap’ drive to the airfield we had bike, run and transition practice in store. First off we went through a mock ‘racking’ as a refresher. This had a time deadline and included a thorough kit check – not a time to be at the back of the queue! Then it was out on to the vast expanse of the runway for a couple of hours where (checking for passing aircraft…) we had some coached speed and handling instruction and practical, followed by several time-trial laps and more practice transitions.
After the sessions I had a look at my bike set-up and I think I may need to reconfigure my gear ratios: I cant seem to get the power I need as easily as I should: on the flat particularly (I suspect Wiggle may have been cautiously kind to me with my bike, as I was a beginner!) Anyway all that can wait until after the IRCs – the last thing I want to do now is start making big changes before the event!
Picture From Africa’s Helmet Camera, Footage To follow In The Next Blog!
Throughout the session we managed to dodge the elements, and although we did have minor gusty showers it wasn’t enough to really get us wet, but it made the coned chicanes that the coaches had laid out a little challenging – especially at speed. We came away tired and confident, having boosted our skills and honed our technique: how we perform on the day we will have to wait and see, but we will all be training up to the last minute I am sure. As they say – the preparation starts well before you turn up for the event! We are now prepared.