Tri-ing again!

It has in fact been almost a year since I “made my triathlon debut”, as they say. In reality, my first tri, on June 1st 2014, was more of an experiment to see if I liked the concept and would like to revisit it at some point in the future. As tri events are much thinner on the ground than straight running races (and a whole lot more expensive to enter!), it's taken me a while to venture a toe into the tri waters for a second time, but once I saw the advert for the beginner-friendly Geopark Adventure Sprint Triathlon in Paignton, I decided it was time to tri again.

The beauty of this event is that it was held within the parameters of the new English Riviera Geopark, and so the whole thing was off road, even the bike! It was a sprint distance, which usually means 400m run, 20km bike, 5km run. However, due to this swimming pool being 33m long, it was a 12 length, 396m swim, a 10 lap (of the velo park) 15km bike and a 4 lap, 5km trail run around a lake. Having literally only just bought my new Canondale Cad8 road bike last weekend, and having only had the chance to have one decent, 17 mile ride on it, the multi-lap, traffic free 15km bike course represented the ideal opportunity to use the bike in competition for the first time.

This is a shot of the event venue, including the velo park cycle track, from the road heading out of Paignton. You can see just how tight some of those corners are!

SWIM
I have been working hard on my swim. I haven't renewed my membership at Exeter Tri club this year because I wasn't getting too much out of their swim sessions, so opted to go it alone! But I've taken what I've learnt at the tri club sessions regarding drills and technique etc and have tried to implement it in my pool swim sessions. I can easily manage 80 lengths all front crawl now. This took me a long long time to achieve. Front crawl used to tire me out and leave me breathless after 4 lengths and so for over a year I implemented an alternate breaststroke / front crawl pattern. I found my time trials were quicker when I alternated each length than when I tried to do all crawl! Even in the Taunton tri I did last year, I had to break into breaststoke for a few recovery lengths in the swim section. In the end, the best advice I was given was to try to slow my stroke right down, to a pace that I could manage to keep up without burning out, and it worked! One day I committed myself to 'no breaststroke, no matter how slow you have to go', and I managed 60 lengths of non-stop crawl. The 'go slower to go faster' tip really does work with swimming! Anyway, I digress, my swim indeed didn't disappoint: I was clocked at 8:40, but this included the hauling myself out of the pool and running the 100 or so meters around the pool building and down to transition, where the chip mat clocked me, so I think the actual swim would have been a sub 8 minute PB!

Need to work on my head tilt; that'll shave some time off my swim. As will learning to tumble turn. That last one might take a while longer...

Exiting the pool after a decent swim, heading for T1!

T1
T1. Hmmm.... this is an area I need to work on. I don't have a tri suit (yet...), and so had to put a tee-shirt on over my tankini combination, my socks, shoes, tri belt, helmet and sunglasses, grab the bike off the rack, readjust helmet as the straps were twisted... all of this took me 1:26. Looking at the results breakdown, only 3 people out of the top 28 finishers had a slower T1 than me. Appalling. I guess these things get slicker with practice though.... and having the correct kit!


BIKE
And so off on the bike! Round and round and round. 10 circuits, each circuit 1500m.
Advantages of a multi-lap velo circuit:
Lots of crowd support
Never far from maintenance, should you have a problem with your kit
Can keep an eye on some of the opposition and guage whether you're having a good bike or a bad one, depending upon how many others you are overtaking / are overtaking you
Very smooth tarmac surface with not a pothole in sight to worry about
No traffic

Disadvantages:
Easy to lose count of how many laps you've done
Slightly tedious and mentally taxing: no scenery to distract; no linear progress from A to B (A and B were encountered every sodding lap!)
Lots of tight cornering, which, as a novice road bike handler, did not play to my advantage
Over-zealous, testosterone-fuelled types on their carbon-fibre race machines carving you up and giving you next to no space when they pass you, scaring you half to death

The support from Matt, my parents and some other running-circuit friends there who knew me was terrific though and kept me focussed. Having them to count the laps for me gave added reassurance and was appreciated! With a wave-start tri event, you can never know how you are doing in the overall scheme of things. I like this aspect of tris; there is an honest purity to focussing on your own race and it rewards those who give it their all and don't try to hide in a pack and win the thing on a last minute kick! I had my head buried in the pool and so I had next to no idea how my swim compared to others in my wave (save that I just managed to lap the lady I was sharing the lane with, so I knew I at least wasn't last out of the water!). I later found out I was second fastest in my swim wave after a super-speedy man; not too shabby considering I'd probably class the swim as my weakest phase. The multi-lap course on the bike, however, did give me some indication that I wasn't doing too tragically as I kept picking others off, maybe about 20 people in total, but I was only overtaken on three occasions by three of the aforementioned testosterone types (think uber-muscular, vein-popping tanned limbs atop carbon clincher wheel sets, splayed out aerodynamically across their tri bars!). Hmm.... tanned limbs. I digress again.

Getting to grips with my one week old Canondale roadie. Coming down onto the drops would position me a bit more aerodynamically, but that will come. It was only my second ride on her!

T2
Into T2 and a much more respectable time of 0:26. The the one advantage of not cleating up for the bike is that you only have one pair of shoes to worry about! 

Only 26 seconds of faffing in T2, compared to 98 seconds in T1!

Exiting T2.

RUN
Once again, I had done absolutely no brick training in preparation for this event and so the jelly-legged feeling upon dismount was bound to happen. What I have found, though, is that although running off the bike feels horrendous to start with, the initial sluggishness does work itself out the further you run, and I found that again here. I'd also made the mistake of taking on too much water on the bike, which was sloshing around inside me when I started the run, causing me to get stitch. The first two laps of the scenic trail run course were thus uncomfortable. I ran most of them holding my side trying to alleviate said stitch. It disappeared about halfway in and then, Wooooosh!, my afterburners had kicked in and I instantly felt stronger, my legs felt good and I was able to lift the pace. I didn't time my laps but I know I was getting quicker and quicker as the run went on. Really I could have done with it being a bit longer as my run time of 19:10 suggests that this wasn't a full 5k – no way was I averaging 6:08m/m pace!

Into what should be my "comfort zone", i.e., the run section, though, with achillies niggles and super stitch for most of it, it turned into more of a 'discomfort zone' on this occasion!

FINISH
Across the finish line and that familiar but of late absent feeling of achievement kicked in, shortly followed by that euphoric post-race high: You know the one? The one that sees you going home after your first marathon and straight onto google to research ultra marathons, or, after your second triathlon, has you typing 'Ironman events' into the search engine.... or is this just me?!)

Second triathlon, done and done!

I wasn't sure how well I'd done in relation to all the other competitors. This is the added excitement of staggered start wave tris: since you can never know or influence how everyone else performs, you just have to concentrate on yourself and push, push push the whole way; backing off could mean the different between a place on the podium and finishing 4th (the horrors!). Did I want a place on the podium? Yes! Always! Did I expect it, given that this was only my second tri and first proper one with a fully functioning road bike? I shouldn't have done, I expect too much of myself, but secretly I did. Not that I expect it in the sense of believing I am capable of it; that is the paradox with me, I demand the world from my body but never actually believe it will deliver the goods! It catches me off guard every time with just how much it will put up with... it also catches me off guard every time by unexpectedly and periodically breaking down on me rather spectacularly, no doubt in some metaphysical 'F**k you' type gesture, 'I ain't takin' any more of this abuse, I'm knackered'. I still wage daily battles with my body and probably always will!

It was a long, anxious wait for the results to be published as their wifi was down on the day so they could not do overall results and prize giving, but the wait was worth it as I had a lovely surprise of getting in from work on Monday evening to find that I'd finished as 2nd lady, 1st in my age category and 8th overall out of men and women! My overall time was 57:51 (8:40 swim, 28:05 bike, 19:10 run). It may not have been as strong a field as the first tri I did at Taunton last year, but I will happily take that 2nd spot and try and build on it.

There is much work to be done. The female who beat me did all the damage on the swim (6:30 to my 8:40), and her T1 was also better (by 36 seconds). My bike and run were stronger, but not enough to claw back a 2 ½ minute deficit before I even mounted the bike. The swim though is definitely something I can work on as I am improving it all the time and really enjoying this sport with zero impact and limited injury risks at the moment! The bike will come as I gain confidence in bike handling and as I get more used to my new wheels, so I'm not too bothered about that. And the run, well, that very much depends on whether or not my achillies decides to start behaving itself. At the moment, all indications are that it's launched itself into a full scale rebellion, but I have more shockwave therapy lined up soon at the R D & E, which I'm hoping will appease it.

Hats off to Geopark Adventures for staging a highly successful inaugural triathlon event. Inaugural events are bound to bring teething troubles, especially when they have three different sporting disciplines combined into one event, and so the fact that the only glitch that came to my attention was the faulty wifi connection, I'd say their first tri event went as smoothly as you could ever hope for. There was a perfect mix of seasoned triers with all the kit and caboodle and absolute beginners, some of which were competing on bikes with wicker shopping baskets on the front! All were made welcome. 

For now, I shall bask in the glory of my first podium finish at a tri.... whilst maybe making a few trips to various tri and bike stores to invest in some better kit (a tri suit and some SPDs would be a starting point), as I have a feeling that I'll be tri-ing again in the not too distant future....

96, 97, 98, 99, ONE HUNDRED!!!

100 parkruns: I made it! I did my first parkrun on June 30th 2012 and managed my 100th on 2nd May 2015. It took me a while to get going with them, coming at them initially from the standpoint of 'why get up a stupid o'clock on a Saturday morning and travel 13 miles each way just to run 5k?' Back in 2012, I never even went out of the door for less than 6 miles, and even that was a rare recovery run! How times have changed since then!

As I reflect on my progress with running since June 2012, I mainly feel that what stands out most is a lack of progress! My Run Britain handicap chart offers a nice graphical representation of a steep and swift climb up a sheer mountainside in 2010, but which has since hit a a plateau and virtually levelled out since early 2012, with only some very minor contouring in between. Blah. I'd like to think this is natural, but the truth is, my string of injuries are the root cause of that plateau as I know that, given the chance to train properly, to the levels I used to, I have so much more in me. Frustrating.

So, whilst parkrun has not been great for my endurance - it's left me feeling like any race over 5k is a bit of a slog, when it used to feel like an 18 minute asthma-attack-inducing sprint! - they have been great in terms of enjoyment, pressure-free adrenaline-charged fun, and for meeting people.... chiefly, helping me to get to know my imminent husband-to-be, Matt.

I didn't know Matt at all when I did my first parkrun on 30th June 2012. I had just, one week previously, moved to Devon from Sherborne, Dorset (go back to beginning blog posts for this!) and didn't really know anybody in the Exmouth / Exeter area. Like me, Matt didn't go to parkrun every week at this time; however, as fate would have it, he was there on June 30th and my Mum managed to capture us both in the same photo at the start of the run! It would take us another 7 months to meet each other officially and actually talk, but I think it's kinda nice that he appears in my first ever parkrun photo memory! (Below).

A lucky capture! Matt likes this photo because he's ahead of me in it! My first ever parkrun, at Killerton, June 30th 2012.

It was around February time, when parkrun moved to Ashclyst Forest on a temporary course due to flooding on the Killerton estate, that a small but keen band of us began to go on a weekly basis and stay behind for coffee after. This is how I met my coach, Gordon, my close friends Adam and Carly and John and Alison, and, of course, my future husband! Parkrun likes to emphasise the friendliness of the scheme and always tries to push the post-run coffee and cake, and you will only hear good things about the parkrun coffee posse from me!

At this time, there were only 3 parkruns in the (deep) South West: Killerton, Barnstaple and Plym Valley. The latter two were too far to trek to at that ungodly hour of the morning (9am starts - I guess you get used to them after a while!), and so we found ourselves converging on Killerton on an almost weekly basis. There was a nice number who regularly attended in 2012 / 2013 and you could soon get to know all the faces. Fortunately or unfortunately, however you want to look at it, the parkrun phenomena has seen a massive boom in past couple of years and Killerton now regularly sees fields around the 300+ mark (a far cry from the 40 hardy souls who lined up every week in Ashclyst Forest!). Whilst it's great for the sport, it does take the intimate feel out of the event a little, and makes getting our favourite seat in the tea rooms after that bit more challenging: humph!

Luckily, several other parkruns have started up to take some of the strain, chiefly for us, Exeter Riverside parkrun, which is directed by our good friends John and Alison Caswell; Parke parkrun at Bovey Tracey; Montacute parkrun near Yeovil; Longrun Meadow parkrun in Taunton; Tamar Lakes parkrun on the Devon / Cornwall border and Lanhydrock parkrun, near my home town of St. Austell, in Cornwall. Weymouth and Blandford are also within driving distance. So we now have choice! Horrah! We have flat, fast courses (Exeter, Taunton, Barstaple), we have hilly scenic courses (Parke, Killerton, Lanhydrock, Montacute), and we have flat trail courses (Tamar Lakes, Weymouth, Blandford).

I have now completed 101 parkruns (snuck an extra one in whilst on holiday in Eastbourne last week!), on 16 different courses, and each course and run has its own very unique atmosphere and feel to it. Aside from the obvious fact that they are run over different terrain, the people that organise the event, the people that attend the event and the weather can all make a massive difference to the feeling you get on the day. I chose to run my 100th run at Killerton as that is where I started out and where I have run most of my parkruns; however, due to the scale of the event now, it has become difficult for them to keep tabs on all the runners comings and goings and so, unfortunately, my 100th run sadly didn't get a mention in the pre-run briefing or in the post-run write-up. Most of the runs I have done try to give acknowledgement to first time parkrunners, visiting parkrunners and parkrunners completing landmark runs (10, 50, 100 etc), but this is easier to manage when you have fields of 100 runners or less. Of course, one only has to look at Bushy, the founder run in 2004, to see how the popularity of parkrun has boomed: its numbers have swelled from a handful to over 1000 runners each week!

Enough parkrun waffle; now for some photographic memories of my parkrun journey from 1 to 101! (NB; It's also a visual documentation of how much my hair has grown in 2 1/2 years and, post wedding, it'll be getting the chop!)

My 2nd run at parkrun, and at Killerton, in autumn 2012: a course PB of 19:36.

First spot of parkrun tourism: running the Harrogate parkrun whilst visiting my Gran, in November 2012, in a time of 19:22.

In February 2013, Killerton celebrated its 101st run whilst the run was relocated to Ashclyst Forest. Compliance with the '101' theme was only adhered to by two of us!

Ashclyst forsest; a tricky 3 lap course with half  a mile downhill, then half a mile back up again each lap! Julian (orange top) and Tom have since become friends and Tom has even bailed me out at the Bicton Blister race by giving me a gel when I was struggling. Love the camaraderie that running, especially parkrunning, generates.

The coffee posse! After a parkrun in Spring 2013, when it was still easy to bag our favourite corner table by the log burner as not that many stayed for coffee! Left to right: Gordon, my coach; Carly, Adam, Dave Tomlin and me. (Matt's taking the photo!)

Second bit of parkrun tourism: after Mile End parkrun in London, on London Marathon weekend. I had started my spell of injuries that spring so couldn't run London, but went with Carly and Adam to support Adam. Also met up with Vicky, my flat mate from uni. Vicky used to think me bonkers when I did so much exercise, now she's a runner too: shows how the sport has taken off! 18:55 on a scenic course that included canal towpath! 

Patriotic red, white and blue theme to celebrate Killerton's 2nd birthday on 27th April 2013. Also a course PB for me that day of 19:20.

One week later, 4th May 2013, and I ran my Killerton PB that still stands today (see, lack of progress!) of 18:50.

June 2013. Parkrun isn't just about the running; it relies on volunteers for it to go ahead. They ask you to volunteer 3 times a year; I usually aim for about 5 times as I run so much. Gordon, my coach and regular Killerton timekeeper, has taught me how to timekeep: so you can also learn new skills at parkrun!

Parkrun tourism again! This time at the inaugural Montactute parkrun, near Yeovil. We went with our friends Adam and Carly in September 2013, it was hot but a stunning setting around the parkland in front of Montacute House.

Being a new parkrun, I got the ladies course record here, running 19:36. A year later, in June 2014, I lowered it to 19:23. It still stands as the ladies course record. I now gold 3 course records: Montacute: 19:23, Parke: 20:29 and Tamar Lakes: 19:33.

Winning the Killerton Christmas fancy dress competition in 2013, dressed as a fairy, complete with flashing halo!

My highest overall placing at Killerton, in January 2014: 1st lady and 3rd overall, just outsprinted for 2nd by John, next to me here approaching the finish. It was muddy that day and so my time of 19:19 wasn't too shabby!)

The inaugural Parke parkrun at Bovey Tracey, late March 2014. Probably my favourite parkrun course to date. It's also the hilliest, but you can't get bored! I hold the course record here (20:29), but I think that could be broken and someone could go under 20 minutes, if the conditions are dry and they are good on hills!

My favourite photo from Killerton: the tree lined avenue, with multi-coloured running tops, me leading the men up the path!! Spring 2014.

Bettering my course record and PB at Montacute, to 19:23, in June 2014.

Christmas fancy dress parkrun at Exeter Riverside: I seem to be the only participant, but there were others dressed up out of shot... but none with flashing tree lights like mine!! December 2014.

1st run of a New Years day double in Bristol. This was Chipping Sodbury parkrun, where I ran 19:10 on a flat but exposed, windy course.

And New Years' Day 2015 parkrun number 2, at Pomphrey Hill. 3 laps, 3 huge hills. Time 22 mins something!

My course PB at Exeter Riverside is 19:03, also ran a 19:07 and 19:15 here. Not got under the 19 min barrier yet as glandular fever saw fit to wreck health and hamper my running performances for the entire winter!

Plaits swishing! Like this photo from Killerton in March 2015.

Killerton parkrun's 200th run was celebrated by running the course in reverse (think starting low and finishing high, more hills!). I would prefer the course to stay this way, but I fear I might be in a minority!

And my 101st run was celebrated at a new event for me, Eastbourne parkrun in Sussex. A lovely flat course around some lakes and a nature reserve. A sedate 19:58. 

Sadly no photos of my most treasured parkrun memory of all: Tamar Lakes in October 2014. I set a new female course record there, which still stands, and had my highest placing overall at a parkrun: 2nd, just missing out on first by 1 second in a sprint finish. However, it is special because immediately after, Matt and I headed to Port Isacc and he proposed to me on the cliff tops there, in my home county of Cornwall. Aaaaah :-)

Looking back at the above photos reminds me of how much fun I've had and of all the the great friendships that I have developed as a result of parkrun; not least, my biggest friendship of all, with Matt. None of this would have been possible without parkrun and so I guess, despite it's downsides (like it being massively addictive to the point that I have frequently run on injuries as I have not wanted to miss out!), I think that parkrun and I will be buddies for a while to come yet! Here's to the next 100!!