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....