On Sunday June 1st I took part in my first triathlon. I had been umm-ing and aah-ing about doing one for a while and kept putting it off, telling myself I don’t have the right kit, I haven’t done sufficient training on the bike, etc etc. In the end I figured that I was just excuse-mongering because I was nervous about venturing out of my comfort zone; so I decided to take the plunge, choose an event, sign up, then just man up and do it! So I entered the Total Buzz Events Taunton Triathlon, held at Taunton School. It was a sprint distance event, with a 400m pool swim, a supposed 20km bike ride, which got extended to 30k (18 miles) due to a last minute course change instigated by the organisers due to safety reasons, and a 5k run. I fully understand and respect the need to put safety first, but the added distance on what is already the longest discipline of the three did not play into my hands. Not that I’m a weak cyclist; I could probably hold my own against the opposition… given the right equipment! I feel this was a genuine and justified case for blaming the tools and not the work-man for a below-par performance! I was cycling on a basic hybrid model (one of about only 4 athletes not on a road bike!) and so, whilst my legs were turning ferociously at ten to the dozen, I was still unable to generate a speed anywhere near that of the road bikes and time-trial machines, with their light-weight carbon frames, sleek high-pressure tyres and aerodynamic handle-bar position. Basically, however hard I cycled, the amount of time I would lose over a 20k cycle, let alone 30k, far exceeds the time I could ever make up on a 5k run.
Nervous but excited: waiting to get underway on my first ever triathlon!
I had managed to get my 400m swim time down to about 8m10s in the time-trials I did myself in the pool and was hopeful that, with the added adrenaline on the day, I could lower this to 8 minutes. However, I was slowed slightly by sharing the lane with other swimmers and having to pull over twice to allow them to pass, and by a ridiculously shallow shallow-end (below knee height when standing, making it impossible to tumble-turn, difficult to pull a normal front crawl stroke without striking the bottom, and requiring an interesting twisting manoeuvre to turn yourself around without bashing your knees on the pool floor). This all resulted in the loss of a couple of seconds every other length and so I was actually quite pleased to see the time of 8:29 on my stop watch when I completed my 16 lengths and exited the pool towards the first transition (T1, to all you tri-techies!).
Swim done - heading for T1.
Triathlon tip from a resourceful newbie: put fleecy lined slipper Crocs filled with talcum powder at the exit of the pool: by the time you run across to transition, your feet will be almost dry, clean and ready for your socks!
The transitions did worry me slightly. The sheer volume of kit you have to take with you to a triathlon is quite baffling to a newbie coming at it from a running background. For running races I arrive fully dressed and shod, ready to run, number pre-safety-pinned to my vest and there to remain for the duration of the run. The only other bits I would take are my inhaler and something warm and dry to put on after if it’s an inclement day. For my first triathlon, I arrived with a whole car full of kit crammed in the boot in the available pockets of space around the bike. This instantly flagged me up as a tri-virgin who had yet to invest in a rear-mounting bike-rack! Aside from the bike (pretty high up on the kit list in terms of essentials), I had my helmet, pump, puncture repair kit, water bottle, tri-belt (to attach the number), swim suit, goggles, socks, Crocs (to wear on exiting he pool), running trainers, which I also cycled in, but for those taking it really seriously, you really need separate bike shoes with cleats, sun glasses and a cycling jersey or tee-shirt, two towels (one to deposit in transition to dry your feet before the bike; the other to shower with after), and a whole new change of clothes for after the event. If it’s a cold day or an open-water swim, you can add wetsuit, waterproof cycling jacket and gloves to this list. In short, there’s a hell of a lot to remember, and this is before you even begin to memorise the various rules.
Faffing around in T1: I'm sure you get more efficient at this with practice!
When you enter the event, you’re sent a 5 page A4 document with instructions on it outlining all the triathlon dos and don’ts. You have to ensure that your bike is racked under your race number and all your kit is laid out alongside it, and not encroaching on the space of your neighbouring competitors, before transition closes at 8am. Oh, yeh, triathlons are also aimed at the early-riser types, of which I most certainly am not one! You need to familiarise yourself with the transition area as there are rules a plenty to observe here: ‘enter in this direction; exit in that direction’, ‘don’t mount your bike before the “bike mount” line’, ‘dismount before the dismount line’, ‘put your helmet on before touching your bike’, ‘rack your bike before removing your helmet’, ‘number showing on your back for the bike, on your front for the run’, and, my particular favourite, ‘no nudity in transition’. Not being the most body-confident of people, this last one wasn’t too difficult to observe! On paper, it all looks rather daunting, but on the day it all flowed quite well and the marshal that pointed out that I hadn’t swapped my number from back to front as I headed out on the run obviously recognised the wide-eyed triathlon newbie in me and was very polite about it!
The headless rider! Off out for a nice 30k bike ride :-)
The bike section was somewhat demoralising. The ‘whoooooooosh’ sound as another, invariably male, competitor zoomed past me on his lean, mean racing machine got a little bit tedious after a while. However, it wasn’t, as I had initially feared, a total embarrassment. Considering my rickety piece of kit, I actually did ok. I was by no means the slowest overall and I did comparatively well on the few inclines, even managing to overtake someone on one hill… for the one and only time on the 30k out-and-back course! Also, had there been a prize for the fastest person not on a road bike, I’m pretty damn sure it would have been mine! Nevertheless, I was still out on the course for 1h06m and so most of the competitors with similar swim times to me (which is how they rank you and get you to line up your bikes in the transition racks) were already back, so I struggled to find a space to park my bike back on the rack, nearly sending another competitor's expensive piece of kit flying... :-/ My time also put me way down on the leading female, and, with her also a strong runner and relatively strong swimmer, this meant I would have to do the 5k run in a world-record destroying time of 3 minutes to overhaul her: never gonna happen. Not that I should have even been thinking about placings on a debut attempt, for which I wasn't all that well prepared, but the competitive instinct in me doesn't just disappear because it's a different sport. Don't be daft!
In T2 and about to head out on the run.
I had difficulty finding a park as I got overtaken by so many people on the bike phase, so all the people that started the swim around the time I did were back and parked up!
I was relieved when I got to the run section as all the technical parts were over: bike racked, helmet off and away I went, heading out to do what comes naturally to me: just putting one foot in front of the other, as fast as my legs and lungs would allow! Having done no brick training whatsoever, I wasn’t too sure how my legs would feel after the cycle, but the initial jelly-legged sensation experienced upon dismount from the bike soon worked itself out and I didn’t feel overly sluggish. I was pleased with my run, which I timed on my own watch at 18:35, but I have a sneaky feeling it didn’t measure a full 5k. Again, this did not play to my strengths: with the bike leg being over distance I could have used a long, not a short, 5k to make up for it.
Back in my comfort zone: on the 5k run.
I felt ever so slightly euphoric upon crossing the finish line: that much loved but, recently, much missed giddying feeling of satisfaction at having tested myself; at having “tri”ed my best and accomplished something new and unknown. I finished 7th female overall. First was way way out in front, but I was only 2 minutes slower than second, which was lost on the bike. Basically, if the bike leg had been the advertised 20k and not 30, I would likely have finished as runner-up, so I can't complain at all.
It was great to experience that buzz again (maybe that's why they call themselves 'Total Buzz Events'?!) that has been missing in my running for some time. It was a welcome change to take part in an event in which I had absolutely no preconceptions of how I would perform and so, no matter what I did, it would be a PB! With time passing steadily by since I took up running in 2010, and with the races (and the win count) notching themselves up, a routine established itself, resulting in an almost robotic ‘here we go again, time to perform’ approach to the sport. Feelings of excitement, anticipation and accomplishment have given way to expectation, apathy and apprehension. If I still felt as though I were moving forward with my running, perhaps I would feel differently; but with the past 18 months having been blighted by injuries and my running (both training and racing) has been dictated by what my left leg can cope with rather than what I would like to do and which goals I would like to accomplish. In short, running has become something of a chore, just something I do, when my body will allow, rather than a joy and something that I want to do.
Crossing the finish line of my first tri generated a buzz and natural high that I have not experienced with my running for some while now.
When I started out with running, I instantly knew that I preferred the endurance stuff than the eye-balls out, lung-busting short stuff. When you complete a marathon or an ultra you feel as though you’ve been on a journey and the post-event euphoria is immense. I just don’t get that from 5ks or 10ks, even if I run well and manage a PB. Other people have told me to bide my time for the longer races, that my legs are still unaccustomed to the distance and I am better off getting some speed into them now and then upping the distance slowly and shelving the longer races for now. I agree: that is the standard approach. You start out as a youngster on the track, doing 800m and 1500m races; then you graduate to the 5000m and 10’000m and start incorporating a few short road races, and then, 10 or so years later, you might do your first marathon. Superb, if you have risen up through the ranks from juniors, but I haven’t. I was forced to run cross country at school and was selected to represent my school at local level athletics because I had a modicum of fitness and was clearly not too bad at it, but I didn’t enjoy it and I didn’t continue with it. I then abused exercise for weight-loss from the age of 15 onwards and grew to hate it even more. It was only at the age of 26, when the idea casually popped into my head that I might like to run a marathon, that I took up running and training properly and actually started to enjoy heading out the door for a run, rather than having to force myself due to some misguided logic that because I hadn’t exercised since that same morning, I was becoming lazy and losing my fitness.
I guess what I am trying to say here is that I found my way to running because I wanted a personal challenge and, over the past year and a half, it has no longer been giving me that challenge. I have spent more time in the gym these past few months, trying to maintain my fitness, than I have actually outdoors, on the trails, running through the countryside. So, whilst I have absolutely no desire to redefine myself as a triathlete just yet, nor to invest in the hundreds of pounds of kit that the sport demands if you want to do it properly, it was lovely to have a go at something completely new and to experience that much-missed natural high that comes from pushing yourself, physically and mentally, to achieve your best. 7th female and 79th overall is a little lower down the pecking order than I would like, but it was far more satisfying than many of my running victories and, as debuts on a £150 hybrid bike go, not a bad benchmark to revisit at some point in the future.
Right now, I need to re-evaluate where my running is taking me; both literally and metaphorically. Whilst my coach would like to see me improve my times at the shorter distances before tackling a marathon again, I’m not so sure. Aside from the satisfaction issue, doing the speed-work required for the shorter stuff is invariably what breaks me. My legs were at their strongest and most injury-free when churning out the longer, slower, higher mileage weeks for marathon and ultra training. So I think it is back to the drawing board for me. I need some fresh goals, some new targets to keep me motivated, and I need to get back to doing what I do best and stop faffing around with all this unsatisfying and painful (on the legs and the lungs!) short stuff!
In front of the beautiful facade of Taunton School, glad that I gave triathlon a tri... ahem, try.
But at £38 a go and with no medal or tee-shirt to show for your money, it's not something I'll be rushing back to until I invest in better kit and get some proper training behind me!
Photo credits, bag holding extraordinaire and chief calmer-downerer and supporter go to my boy friend extraordinaire, Matt!
The fabulous gym at my work that I can train in before and after school each day. 
