English
Last weekend was the last tri of the season, and one I was not thrilled about doing given the cold snap we experienced Saturday. The race was part of the Castle Triathlon Series and the final race was at Hever Castle, the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, in Kent.
With my cousin’s 25th birthday party the night before I had asked the organisers to put me in one of the later waves to avoid a super early start, a request I didn’t realise would have consequences…
As expected the water was cold and muddy. I took Stuart’s advice from one of his recent posts and skipped the swim warm up, opting for a land one instead. We had received an email a few days before the event advising that wetsuits were optional, and there were 4 people in my wave had opted not to wear one. Looking at them shivering their way through the race briefing helped me feel warmer!
I couldn’t get into the swim, I was just so cold. Thankfully it was only 800m and not the full 1500m so it was soon over. Unfortunately transition wasn’t very well situated and was on what I imagine is normally a gravel car park. Paying £70 for a race I would expect some decent matting down across the gravel to protect our feet. There was a thin strip of blue matting that wasn’t wide enough to pass someone on, and it had been blown away in sections so you had to pick your way through it. There also wasn’t enough of it so where I racked my bike had nothing, except the towel I had bought along with me.
I couldn’t do my normal transition routine of having my shoes on the bike and doing a running start. There was no matting leaving transition and the bike mount area was on gravel and I just felt it was too dangerous. A decision that was firmly made when I watched a man running out of transition slip on the gravel and land on top of his tri bars. How he didn’t do himself some serious damage I have no idea.
It was a nice bike course with some lovely ups and downs, however I didn’t count on the wind and bad road conditions. The combination was making me a bit nervous about being down on the bars on my Focus Izalco Chrono simply because with Zipp 808 wheels on, I was being blown all over the place! Not a great feeling to be flying down a hill and then have the bike start twitching underneath me. It meant my bike time was a lot slower than normal but I made it back in 1 piece.
The run course was around the castle grounds and was only 8km, made up of 2 x 4km laps. Imagine my surprise as I was heading back through transition to start my 2nd lap to hear the awards ceremony kickoff! After hearing what time the 3rd placed girl got I did some quick math and realised I was on track to beat that. I figured I must have heard wrong but I now had a target time in my head to beat.
After checking official results later that day, I was listed as third! A quick email to the organisers and they confirmed they had awarded the 4th placed woman my prize assuming that anyone still out there on the course wouldn’t be in contention. No big deal, they have promised to rectify the situation explaining that they try and do the awards early to ensure people are still there. Let that be a lesson learnt, the early bird does catch the worm!
So, for me it is now run, run, run in preparation for the Nice marathon in mid November. With 1 long run, completed yesterday, under my belt I have a lot of work to do! I am doing a 20km race at Cap d’Antibes on Sunday which is right down the road from Nice so getting my butt kicked there will be give me the boost I need to get moving!
Happy training.
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