Portishead-cold triathlon

“Aaaa-tchooo”! Yet another sodding cold. My sixth one of the year. We were crammed in like sardines on an over-crowded tube, returning to our hotel after a superb evening at the World Athletics Championships in London last week and I said to Matt, ‘I bet you I pick up another bug from holding onto this filthy pole; I haven’t had one for almost two months, I must be due one soon”. Sure enough, two days later, the sneezing started, and by the time Portishead Triathlon day dawned, it was a stuffy head-cold in full swing, making me feel super-grot.

I signed up to Portishead late on as I decided I needed another outing before the Brutal Half in September to race test my Sugoi long-sleeved tri-suit that I plan to wear and make sure it’s comfortable. It was the only triathlon I could find that was within travelling distance from home and that fitted in with my schedule; however, it still meant a 4:30am alarm call to be there in time for my wave start at 7:30am. Having taken Night Nurse to help me sleep, when that alarm sounded I was groggy as hell and no amount of caffeine on the car journey there was sufficient to rev me up. I felt proper ropey and did question whether it was a wise move to be competing and whether it wouldn’t make me suffer more afterwards. I decided it probably would, but I also felt I mentally needed another outing before the biggie, and so I decided to race it as a tempo effort and hold back from hitting threshold.

The swim was in a 33m outdoor Lido. Very nice, but with 7 people in my lane, some of whom did not seed themselves too accurately, it was a messy affair. I took it steady and didn’t get to the usual gasping for air stage, so wasn’t surprised to be 30 seconds slower than my Dorchester swim time, coming in at 7:57. A swift T1 and off onto a hilly and extremely windy bike course. The first part of each of the two bike laps took us along the coast road and there was an almighty crosswind coming in from the Severn Estuary. Every time I cycled past an open gateway I would get blown sideways: about the only time I am ever grateful for not having a swanky pair of deep rim wheels is in a strong crosswind! I always like a good hill and found that, even though not going at full pelt, I was picking people off throughout. I only averaged 18mph on the bike, but with 1000ft of climb and the wind factor, plus a total of four mandatory foot down and stop junctions, it was a hard course to establish a rhythm on.

Off to tackle a 25km hilly, blustery bike course.

 I took it easy on the first couple of miles of the run and enjoyed the off-road stretch along the coast path, before picking up the pace to 6:30m/m for the last mile. It was then a long wait to see how I’d done as I started in the third wave and there were around 200 competitors still to go after me: the draw back with pool tris is that they are very strung out; I was done before 9am but had to wait until midday for everyone to finish and for the prize giving. Considering I was holding back a bit on all three phases, I was pleased to have bagged another second place (getting to be a bit of a habit where pool tris are concerned; aside from the one win at Dorchester, I have placed second in every pool tri I have done!).

Getting blown along Portishead promenade.

 Now my thoughts turn to the big one: the Brutal Half in Llanberis on 16^th September. Not that there’s ever a good time to get ill, but if there is a really bad time, now is probably it! I decided that the week in London should be a kick back week to allow me to recharge batteries ahead of two high volume training weeks this week and next, and then a two week taper. Unfortunately, this week is now having to be another easy week, and next week I will likely have to build back in slowly and then we are getting too close to race day to be putting down any heavy mileage. Massively inconvenient but hey ho, nothing to be done; just got to hope that what I have done up until now will see me through. Mind you, having had plenty of time on my hands these past few days to read previous competitors’ race reports and comments on the Brutal, I am now questioning whether I haven’t massively underestimated this one…

As I think I mentioned in a previous post, the race I am doing is part of a ‘Brutal Fest’ of four different length races; my half iron distance being the shortest. All involve a swim in the always-glacially cold Llyn Padarn, a hilly cycle that circumnavigates the Snowdon range, and an off road run at the end that involves a full ascent and descent of Mount Snowdon. I will swim 1900m, bike 58 miles (two full loops of the Snowdon massif) and run 14.8 miles. The full Brutal will be double all of this; the double Brutal four times all of this, and the…. wait for it… triple Brutal six times all of this. Those taking on the Triple will be required to swim 11.4km (7 miles), bike 350 miles and then run 78 miles. No wonder this is billed as the toughest triathlon in the world! I have strong doubts as to whether anyone will manage to complete the triple. It is the first year they have held this (previously the double was the longest, and only 20 people managed to finish that within the cut-off times, no women). On the one hand I am in awe of anyone who is prepared to take on a challenge of this magnitude, but on the other, I find it rather ridiculous that these crazy events keep getting longer, harder, tougher: it almost belittles the achievement of doing an Ironman, once seen as the pinnacle of all endurance feats. The half Brutal, for me, will be a tough test of both my mental and physical strength. I estimate I will take at best 7 hours to complete it, and so it will be the longest event I have ever done (topping the Dartmoor Discovery Ultra by some two and a half hours). A half iron over this terrain, involving a run up Snowdon after you’ve already cycled round it twice and swum in a freezing cold lake, is no walk in the park, but because of the distances the other competitors are taking on, it will come out as the “sprint” version, the fun-run! I think any moans from me about how tired my legs are or how bad the weather is will be met with disdain by any competitors taking on the longer distances!

Ah, the weather! In my mind, it is going to be dry and sunny, it just is. Yes, deep down I know there is a very good chance it won’t be, but after having flirted with hypothermia in the awful conditions of the Slateman last year, I refuse to entertain the possibility that I will be cycling down a mountain in a glorified swimming costume getting hailed on once again. I just don’t know what I’d do if I awoke on race morning to find it hammering down… well, besides cry! Having recently looked at the kit list, I’m contemplating hiring a pack-mule to haul all my items up the mountain: waterproof jacket, waterproof trousers, mobile phone in water-proof casing,  headwear, gloves, minimum 400mls water, food and energy products, foil blanket, blister plasters, compass, whistle, light for attracting attention etc etc. I have not done anywhere near the running volume I would like for taking on a 15 miler (this is my current weekly mileage on a good week; I haven’t run this distance in one go since January 2014!), but I figure by this point vast sections of the mountain will be done at a walk anyway, and gravity will bring me back down again! My biggest worry is getting the fuelling right. I am not good at eating on the go and probably need to practice more, but I simply can’t stand gels and can’t bring myself to consume them in training. This week I booked an extra day off work as holiday so I could fit in two long bike rides and practice some refuelling on the go… instead I am stuck indoors refuelling on Lemsip. Ah well, nothing to be done but be patient and hope it soon passes. I know my immune system is not the best, but I can’t help feeling I have had my full quota of colds for 2017 already and so it should be plain sailing from here…. we’ll see.

But some positive news for the meantime, I have been seeing a new physio; he used to work with all the elite athletes at Loughborough before moving to East Devon. He has put me on a strengthening program for my achillies and left calf, and so far so good. I was able to return to a race that I really love – Totnes 10k – two weeks ago and was absolutely shocked and thrilled to have fought my way through the field to claim the win. I last won this race in 2013, the year in which I set all my PBs, but also the year in which my injury troubles started. So to have won but also, more importantly, to have only been 10 seconds slower than my winning time from 2013, was a much needed confidence boost. I had begun to doubt that I would ever get back to winning running only races again, so this was a massive deal to me. Running will always remain my first love and, although I have grown to embrace the freedom of the bike, nothing will ever beat the highs of those early days of my running career when I was taking the tape at marathons and venturing off on 3 hour long solo training runs along the stunning Devon coast path. There’s a long way to go in terms of my rehab, but there is now maybe a glimmer of hope that I may one day get myself back up to marathon distance…. And maybe then we can think about entering an Ironman! 

The hilly wooded section at Totnes 10k.

Chuffed to take the win at one of my favourite races.

If at first you don't succeed, tri tri again....

Halleluiah! I have finally won a triathlon! After 2 years in the sport, 12 different races, 4 second place finishes, 4 third place finishes, and a couple of anomalies (including the shockingly bad 32^nd place at Dambuster last year – the least said about that debacle the better –) I have finally won. Maybe the motto ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try / tri again’ isn’t just a meaningless idiom after all. Duathlons, fine, cracked those a while ago, but whenever water is involved, it all tends to go ever so slightly to pot. I am by no means an atrocious swimmer: when I go to the pool to train, I can totally hold my own in the “fast lane”… mind you, the slow lane often contains a plethora of people doing a superb variety of breast-stroke, backstroke, side-stroke and fuck-only-knows-what-stroke, so perhaps this is not really the most accurate gauge of my aquatic capabilities. In the pool, my all-time 400m PB is 7:02; in open water I tend to swim slower as I can’t avail myself of my thunder thighs to get a damn good push off the wall every 25 meters! However, in competitive triathlon, the top ladies are banging out swims in the region of 5 minutes for 400m and, assuming they can bike and put together a half decent run, two+ minutes is a hell of a lot of time to make up over the sprint distance. But today, it all miraculously came together. I posted my fastest competition swim split of 7:24 for the 400m and it felt comfortable. I hauled myself out of the pool not remotely out of breath and was able to follow on with a slick transition and a good getaway on the bike.

The bike course was a hilly affair, climbing 900ft over the 20kms up to the Hardye Monument above Dorchester, then a fast descent down, including crossing two cattle grids – always a total boneshaker – and a fast, flat last section back to T2. The climb was into a headwind and felt like a real slog, but I took comfort from the fact that I kept picking people off and that nobody – including the men –overtook me on the bike leg. Since getting my lovely Lively Liv, I have developed much more confidence on the bike and my descending skills have definitely improved as a result. I love the ‘swoosh’ noise Lively makes when cutting through the air…. a noise I had only ever experienced up until now from other riders as they zoomed past me at speed as I slogged ever-onwards aboard trusty old Cannondale. The long-term aim is to get her some snazzy new deep-rim carbon wheels to make her even livelier, but at £500+ a pop, that’ll have to wait for the time being!

The run was fab. Off road, hilly and over distance (3.5 miles instead of the advertised 5k at 3.1): everything I love and everything I need to offset the time lost on the swim! Last week, at Honiton Tri, I posted the fastest female run split but, at 2.8 miles, the run was some way short of 5k and so the run to swim time ratio doesn’t weigh in my favour. In fact, this win came at just the right time as, despite improving on my Honiton Tri time from 2016 by a minute last week (all of which came from improvement on the bike), I had felt frustrated and deflated to still finish as second lady, and I was beginning to doubt whether an overall female win would ever be possible for me in triathlon, given my crappy swim credentials. Truth be told, I have had a rather naff week in general, involving much soul searching. Following my resignation from my role as Club Captain and Communications Officer of my tri club, I have spent a couple of weeks questioning my future in a sport which, at times, can be very money-orientated, materialistic and elitist. Several bouts of introspective naval-gazing, the penning of a very negative blog post (which was never intended for public consumption, but was cathartic to write nevertheless), combined with some good talking-tos from my bestie tri buddies – Anne, Jim, Garry and Moira – and now today’s win and ensuing bout of endorphin fuelled, post-race euphoria, have made me sit up, sort my self-indulgent, sanctimonious shit out, kick myself up the pants and put a halt to the miserable, moody mare attitude.

But, let’s not get carried away… I won at a pool swim event. The telling factor will be whether or not I can repeat the success at an open water tri, which tends to involve even more sub-aquatic demons for me than the benign waters of a leisure centre pool…. even with its floating verruca plasters and added ammonia extras! But, for now, I need to be positive, to celebrate this milestone with some prosecco (cheers!) and keep working on my swim survival skills so that winning becomes less of an ‘oh My God, I can’t believe it, I got so lucky’ occasion, and more of a regular thing! Over the past few weeks I have developed the diligent habit of swimming in the sea for a good 30 min plus session with my old Exmouth Harriers buddy, Rich Bishop; and, whilst I am never going to be one of these people who deludes themselves that a refreshing dip in the murky, jelly fish-infested waters of the English Channel can be anything more than tolerable, I am beginning to grow in confidence in open water. For the Brutal Half Iron in September, I will need to swim 1900m in a freezing cold mountain lake. On present form, I should do that in around 38 minutes, but, to be competitive, I need to shave that down to the sub-35 region. It’s a big ask, but I like a challenge. Bring it on!

Honiton Sprint Tri, 9/7/17

400m / 20k / 5k: 1h06m03s. 2nd lady

Dorchester Dash Sprint Tri, 16/7/17

400m / 20k / 5.5k: 1h14m09s, 1st lady

Stourhead Sprint: Survive the swim, savour the bike, smash the run!

Triathlon season is underway! Last weekend I competed in the Immortal Sprint at Stourhead. With a 900m swim, 19 mile bike and 4.75 mile run, it’s actually midway between sprint and standard distance, so a 'mega sprint'. I was attracted to this race by a few things: the shorter swim to bike/run ratio; the stunning location within the grounds of the Stourhead Estate (part of the National Trust, so bonus points for free staff parking, 20% discount in the café and free entry for my supporters, all part of the N.T. staff perk package!); the 5pm start time. 5pm is an unusual time for a triathlon – they tend to be crack of dawn affairs – but the Immortal Sprint was part of a weekend of racing within the estate, with a 10k race Saturday morning, the sprint Saturday evening and a half iron distance at 7am Sunday morning. Was an evening race more enjoyable?…. I’ll cover that one in a bit!

Being 2 weeks after the duathlon champs in Soria, I thought that this was sufficient time to rest and recover and feel raring to go again. However, me being me, our 4 days in Madrid were spent entirely on our feet, walking here, there and everywhere, and that was tiring in itself. The day after we returned from Spain I ran the Ivybridge 10k. When I signed up for it I thought I would be in good 10k shape, but all the set backs of 2017, including the achillies niggle at the start of the year, then the 8 week long cough/cold/chest infection and then a calf strain at Clumber Park all meant that I just wasn’t able to do the training and the miles needed to get myself up to speed. I decided to run Ivybridge anyway and was pleased with a time of 40:16 on what is by no means a flat course and to just clinch third place in a sprint finish…. I don’t do speed work and my legs are just not used to sprinting, so this turn of speed came as a shock to me! 4 days after Ivybridge I took part in my first ever cycling time trial, a 10 miler on the Sid Valley course that goes on the A30 through Honiton and back. I clocked a time of 26:45, which, I am reliably told, is not a bad first attempt… for a woman…. on a road bike… with no power meter or HRM or any means of pacing herself other than via her usual ‘go like fuck and hang the hell on’ approach: it hasn’t let me down yet! Anyway, Stourhead then came 3 days after the T.T., so, in hindsight, I once again took on a bit too much in a short space of time and didn’t feel exactly fresh and raring to go come race day.

A pre-race stroll around the gardens and grounds.

 The 5pm start…. Hmm…. On the face of it, attractive: no setting the alarm for ghastly o’clock and relying on intravenous caffeine to get you going. However, I never seem to perform well at evening races and every evening race I have done I have struggled to get my nutrition and eating pattern right throughout the day and this often leads to me getting a mid-race stitch at some stage. It happened at Ivybridge (a 6pm start) where I struggled with a bad stitch for the best part of a mile, and it happened again here. I am someone who suffers with severe blood sugar crashes and needs to eat little and often throughout the day and I think, with evening races, I end up eating too much through fear of having a blood sugar bonk mid-race. Evening races also mean you have a whole day to stress and get worked up rather than just a couple of hours. We went up to Stourhead early to make the most of the long drive there, make a day of it and look around, but then I start thinking, ‘I’m spending too long on my feet, I’ll pay for this later, maybe I should just go and sit in the café and eat some more….’ By the time 5pm came, I was devoid of adrenaline as I’d used it all up in the hours preceding the race, but full of food and stress hormones having spent hours working myself up. On reflection, I think I prefer morning races!

On the lake shore, ready to go: let's get this aquatic ordeal over with!

Charge to the first buoy, which was very close to the bank and very congested!

 The lake at Stourhead is sizeable, but not massive, and to fit a 900m loop into it, they have to take you almost out to its perimeter. At one point you swim through a narrow channel between the main bank and a lake island. Although it looked lovely and clear from the bank before we entered, it didn’t take long for 200+ triathletes to churn it up and, because we swam so close to the shore, most of the swim was in very shallow water (at one point I put my hand down to take a stroke and scraped the rocks on the bottom). The result was the most awful swim experience I’ve had yet! There were no staggered wave starts, all 200 ish competitors set off at once, and the turn at the first buoy was fast, frenzied, and gnarly. I got dunked, swum over, elbowed and kicked, and swallowed what felt like half the lake, and this was only 100m in! My breathing rate went up, I couldn’t establish a rhythm as there was just no space, the water was so silted up it was black as the night… can you tell I hated every minute of it!? It was extremely disorientating to plunge your face into pitch black water, then turn to breathe in full sunlight and keep repeating this process every breath. I felt…. get ready for one of my favourite words…. discombobulated! “Never again. Stick to duathlons. You hate swimming and you are shit at it. This is not for you.” 

For me, the swim usually pans out something like this:

Feel competitive and fired up, so position myself at the front on the start line.

Look over my shoulder, see how many competent-looking swimmers are behind me, start shuffling back a couple of rows.

Claxon goes, we start swimming, I swiftly start getting over-taken.

Realise I was wildly overambitious and should have positioned myself 6 people back, not 3.

Have a truly horrendous experience at the first buoy due to my over-zealous positioning.

Emerge the far side of the first turn, looking like a drowning tortoise that’s found itself cast adrift on a giant pond and is then being attacked by a pack of vicious but graceful porpoises.

Why are you doing this? You are tortoise, not porpoise. The water is not the place for you.

Regroup. Remind myself that although I’m the tortoise of the water I am the gazelle of the dry land: my time is coming; I just need to get through this ordeal first.

Finally the pack starts to thin and I can actually start swimming (as opposed to the drowning avoidance type of survival moves I have been employing up until now).

Start to pick off a few swimmers who went out too hard early on. Swim exit sighted. Feeling good.

Haul myself out of the water and back into my natural environment.

Meh. Survived. Suppose the swim wasn’t so bad. Now let’s get to work.

Swim survived: now we get to work.

 At Stourhead though, the pack did not thin out and I never got to the point of finding a nice rhythm and picking people off. That swim exit could not come soon enough! Once back on terra firma, that is where the race really begins for me. Time to start making up all the places I have just lost. Let’s go!

It was a long run up a fairly steep drive to T1 (T1 time of over 5 minutes for most competitors give an indication of how far away the racks were from the lake). I think this played to my advantage as I overtook 3 women on the run up to T1 alone! Out on the bike, wanting to put my bad swim behind me and put the hammer down but my slow swimming once again came back to bite me. The problem with being so far down out of the water is that there are so many people in front of you who are far less athletic and less fit than you on dry land, who you now need to overtake. The first part of the bike route was on windy, narrow lanes through a couple of villages and I found that the cars that overtook me would then get stuck behind groups of slower riders in front, who I was now catching. For about 2 miles I was stuck in a tail back of cyclists intermingled with vehicles and I couldn’t overtake and get going. Absolutely maddening but nothing to be done – you can’t overtake cars on blind bends and put yourself in the path of oncoming vehicles – just got to sit it out. I tried to focus on the positive and the draft effect and easy ride I was getting from being behind a car and, once the road was clear, I cycled my wee legs off to make up lost ground.

It was a rather hilly route (1400ft elevation over 19 miles), which suited me well and I posted a bike split of just under the hour, averaging 19mph. Lively is living up to her name and consistently delivering me faster bike splits – my white speedy dream machine! Survived the swim and savoured the bike; now to smash the run!

Arriving back into T2 and my Dad told me ‘You’re 6^th female”. I asked, “How far ahead are they?” “5 and 4 not too far, but the others quite a long way”. Hmm…. at 4.75 miles, this was longer than the usual 5k distance of a sprint tri, but would it be long enough to allow me to reel them in? Just gotta go for it and find out.

Off to smash the run!

I caught one lady about a mile in. Ok, 5^th, keep working. The first 3 miles were a slow, steady uphill drag, then we turned back into the estate and began a steep, one mile long descent. I told myself, you can’t be your usual cautious self on the downhill, just go for it. So I let the brakes off and let gravity do the work for me. Approaching the 4 mile point and I hadn’t passed and couldn’t see any other women. We were heading back uphill again and I was flagging and thought about backing off a bit as I wouldn’t have space to catch them now….. and then Matt appeared! He has a habit of being in the right places on a course when I either need a mental pick me up or else some information. I screamed, ‘Where are they all? I’m just not catching any women!’ He said, ‘Third is only 40 seconds ahead and fading fast. You can get her. Push on, go on, push on’. Third? I thought I was fifth. Maybe I had overtaken another lady and mistook them for a man. Maybe my Dad miscounted. With renewed vigour, I kicked on and around the corner I saw her. The last 800m were all uphill and the lady looked like she was struggling. ‘Go past her and go past hard and make it look easy so she doesn’t think about trying to go with you’. She clearly had nothing left to do that and I rounded the corner into the finish funnel to hear my name being announced as third lady. Yes, my Dad had miscounted…. that’s the last time I listen to on-course info from him!

Podium! Might have caught second place too if I'd been able to see her - the invisible triathlete!

Incidentally, the lady I just beat to the podium is a vet 50-59 year old. I have raced her twice previously, at the Cotswold Sprint (my first open water tri) in 2015, and at South Hams Sprint in 2016. Both times, she beat me. She is a phenomenal swimmer and a terrific biker but her run is the only weak spot. So, whilst I take some encouragement from beating her for the first time, I also remind myself that she is approximately 20 years my senior and a truly classy triathlete. I was 13th lady after the swim, 5th (not 6th!) after the bike and 3rd by the finish. I posted the fastest female run split by over 3 minutes, but I lost around 4 minutes on the top ladies on the swim. The usual story. Us top 3 women all finished in consecutive places within a minute of each other.... just needed another mile on the run distance and reckon I could have had a sniff at the top spot. But this is triathlon, not uno-athlon, and there is always a crappy swim to offset.

A couple of days later, back at work, when I informed N.T. Ranger colleagues that I’d swum in Stourhead lake and it was a truly ghastly experience, they comforted me with their talk of weils disease and cryptosporidium. I laughed with them, but then, when 5 days later I was struck down with the more horrendous D and V bug I’ve experienced since having the norro virus in 2012, I’m not so sure! Maybe I had every reason to dislike that swim after all! Who knows? But I think a little break from triathlon is needed for a while before I can face another swim survival experience! Lucky for me that a week’s cruise around the Adriatic for my Mum’s 70^th birthday will provide that break. 

My Spanish silver lining...

I've been back from Spain for nearly a week now and it’s almost two weeks since the ETU European Sprint Duathlon Championships in Soria, so time for some reflections. There is just so much I could write about the whole experience as, frankly, it was an absolutely amazing week, so keeping it brief is going to be hard. I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, I am never short of words and brevity isn’t my strong suit, but I’ll try!

The one thing I didn’t think would be a key discussion item regarding a race in Spain was bad weather… I've had my fair share of bad weather at races in the UK (Slateman topping the pile!). But, Soria sits high in the mountains, at 1100m – yes, that it higher than Snowdon – and so it has its own quirky weather system. Cold cold winters and hot hot summers are typical, but in the interim seasons, i.e., back end of April, you can get any and all of the weathers within this annual spectrum within the space of a few days. 10 days before the championships, temperatures were 22 degrees: that would represent ideal racing conditions for me as I cope relatively better in heat than in cold. 5 days before the champs, temps were down to zero degrees and the town saw snowfall.  Not ideal; in fact, bloody awful. The 7-day forecast ranged from 2 degrees up to 20 for the time we would be there. So, into the suitcase went my winter jumpers, hats, gloves, scarves, along with my shorts, tee-shirts, vest tops. Packing for the race meant the trisuit, along with two base-layers, a water-proof cycling jacket and 3 different types of glove.

After a flight from Heathrow to Madrid with Iberia, we boarded an Alsa coach for the 2 ½ hour drive to Soria. What struck me on the journey was that we seemed to spend the entire time going up. Madrid already sits high above sea level on a plateau, and yet we continued to climb. Stepping off the coach, the drop in temperature from Madrid to Soria was striking – about 4 degrees the evening we arrived, with a wind chill factor far below that.

Matt had planned the whole trip expertly, as usual, to save me the stress of such issues and allow me to concentrate on my race. We’d got a hotel which was literally a 30 second walk from the race start and finish line and only cost 50 euros a night. That was the second thing that struck me about Soria – how ridiculously cheap everything was in the town. It’s not a tourist location; in fact, one American lady who’d married a Spaniard and been living in the town for the past 10 years remarked that this was the first time she’d heard English voices there in all that time! None of the locals spoke English and so my rusty Spanish (mostly just an adaptation of the French word with a Spanish accent and hoping for the best) had to be coerced out of hibernation. The feel of the town was extremely welcoming, friendly and relaxed and this all added to the experience. There was an amazing bakery and café, called ‘York’, again just 30 seconds walk from our hotel, which sold the best array of cakes I have ever clamped eyes on. Lunch on our first day was in a little café bar. We had two filled crusty rolls each, I had two coffees and Matt had tea, all for 7 euros! An evening meal with wine for two came in at around 15 – 20 euros. It was a real shock after our last trip abroad to Paris last November where you couldn’t get a coffee with much change from 5 euros.

We arrived on Thursday and my race was on Sunday. Friday I was repatriated with my bike, expertly hand-delivered to my hotel room in Soria by Cycle Transfer, who had collected it from my house the previous weekend and driven it down to Spain. (Lively was subsequently driven back to the UK after and was there waiting for me at home when I got back). I then cycled up to the Team GB Hotel, which we were too late to get a room in when we booked, but, on reflection, was a blessing as it was 20 minutes out of the town and away from all the action and race venue. The Team GB mechanic checked my bike over and gave her a small service and I had a massage from the GB masseuse to get my legs race ready. That afternoon Matt and I did a 5 mile easy trail run on the gravelly trails on the edge of town. Two things alarmed: one, Soria is bloody hilly, and two: the thinner air at this altitude made breathing noticeably harder, particularly on that first run as I was acclimatising. Another competitor looked into this after the race and produced some stats: at 1100m there is only 89% of the available oxygen at sea level. For someone who runs a 5k in 20 mins at sea level, this would roughly equate to 20:30 – 20:45 mins at this altitude. (I did not know this when I posted a run time of over 20 mins, but finding it out after, and finding out that no women broke 19 minutes, def helps explain the slower times across the board).

On Friday afternoon we registered and I got my race number. Athletes could buy a 1 euro pass which allowed us to use any of the sports facilities in the town, including gyms and swimming pools, for the whole week of the championships. Matt was allowed too as “my coach” (well, they weren’t to know!), and so Friday afternoon we went for a swim in a lovely pool and had it to ourselves for most of the session. Friday night was the opening ceremony. All the participating athletes paraded through the town, behind our national flags and flag bearer, to the race start / finish and media area, where the town’s mayor officially welcomed us and opened the championships. Fireworks and party number 1 followed.

The Saturday we mostly spent watching the elite, junior and para duathlon races. I took special note of how the elites mount their bikes and get into their shoes. A few were very slick but most were faffing around trying to get their shoes on once on the bike, having pre-attached them with elastic bands. I have been weighing up to the pros and cons of this method for a while, but, unless you are super-slick and can master it perfectly, I think you lose more time doing this than just putting your cycling shoes on in T1 and running to the mount line in them. This was confirmed on race day when I got to the mount line at the same time as three other girls who were using the elastic band method; I clipped straight in and was away and left them faffing around in my wake: never saw them again!

Saturday afternoon was the Team GB briefing. A chance for all our questions and worries to be answered and alleviated… er, well, mostly. There was some... no... lots of confusion over the layout of transition. The race rule booklet had published one thing, our team managers had been told (and so told us) something different. Come race morning when we went to rack, the layout had changed yet again and was different to both the pre-advertised layout and the revised layout we’d be told of yesterday… and then, the icing on the cake, when we ran into T1 after the first run, we were all horrified to find it had changed yet again, for a forth time, even from what we were told by officials in the transition area just a few hours earlier! I am not saying that this had an impact on me totally overshooting my bike in T1 and running back and forth effing and jeffing for the best part of 20 seconds until I found it, but I’m sure it didn’t help! Then came the pre-race GB group photo call, and then the official business was all done for the day. Off to find a Spanish restaurant that actually opened at 6pm to enable us to have an early dinner (9pm onwards is usual on Spanish time scales), then try to get some sleep…. HA! Fat chance of that. There was the medal ceremony for all the Saturday races, followed by party number two. The Spanish love a reason to fiesta and the townsfolk really got behind the whole championships and embraced every minute of them… on this occasion, every minute right up until 3:30am on the Sunday morning. I was beginning to see a downside to a hotel room just 30 seconds walk from the start / finish area….

The startline / finish / media area.... oh, and that's our hotel in the background!

Back to weather talk. The Friday had been very cold but beautifully sunny. Not bad racing conditions as you could base layer up, but the ground was dry. Some of the sections went over cobbles, rather shiny cobbles, and these are notoriously ice-rink like when wet. Saturday was slightly warmer (8 degrees), overcast and threatening rain, but it never happened. Sunday's forecast was for showers around lunch time with a chance of thunder. Great. The last place I'd opt to be in a thunder storm is out on an exposed Spanish motorway on two skinny wheels. Wake up at 6:15am race morning, having had no more than 3 hours sleep due to the party. Look out of the window: dry, phew. Go and get a shower to wake me up, emerge, get kit ready, check window again: the ground is now soaking wet. There’s been a downpour whilst I’ve been in the sodding shower. Oh no! After days of being dry, this will mean the surface is greasy and lethal slippery. Stress levels start to rise.

Eat porridge. Neck coffee. Get bike and transition kit ready and leave the hotel. Around the corner, the ground is bone dry…. Then I see the Spanish town workers further up the street hosing it down to clean it, just like they do at 6:30am every morning! Doh. Calm down a bit now, the bike route should be dry, horray! But it’s windy, boy is it windy. Rack, then go for a warm up, then back to the hotel to chill for 20 minutes until my call time. That 20 minutes is pretty much spent back and forth to the ensuite bathroom toilet. Suddenly found a fresh appreciation of a hotel room so close to the start: no queuing for revolting portaloos, just use my own facilities then mosey on down a minute before my call time.

We are held in pens and set off at 3 minute intervals. Men aged 16-39 at 8:30am, men 40-49 8:33, men 49+ 8:36, then us women 16-39 at 8:39. In the holding pens behind the start, the Pirates of the Caribbean theme tune is played on the loud speaker, then, to build tension, it turns to a loud beating heart as you get to a minute to go. Then, the horn: GO!

The course layout is not ideal. It’s a narrow path that snakes through the park: 6 hairpin switch backs in total, climbing up one side, turning, coming down the next. It’s two loops, and all the sprint athletes are out on the course at once. Just as we women are about to start, the faster senior men are just coming through at the end of their first lap. Chaos ensues! The men are now trying to weave their way through a wall of women. Up the first side, the wind makes its presence felt and the chunky metal barriers that line the route and keep spectators off the course blow over and onto the run route. Some women in front of me have to hurdle them, one woman trips over and the course is now down to one runner’s width on this section, with approximately 200 runners trying to squeeze through. That first mile is my slowest as I simply cannot find space to get running. By mile two, we are thinning out a bit and I’m starting to catch some of the slower men from the 49+ age group. Matt reckoned that after he first mile, I was around 30^th woman overall. I never start fast as I don’t do any speed work, I just don’t have the leg turnover. But I can pick a pace and stick to it, and often, once my legs warm in, I can up the pace towards the end. So from mile 2 onwards, I start working my way through the field. I’m up to 11^th as I come into T1.

T1 ballsed up, as described above, and I’m in a queue to get out of the field and onto the road to the mountline. Come to a stand still as a result, but nothing to be done. Once on the bike, all the worries about punctures go as all my energy and focus goes into riding. This is the first event I have done on closed roads and it’s great. Mind you, with so many riders out on the course at once, there isn’t a lot of space and we are often 4 abreast overtaking. The draft police are out in force as this is a championship event. I see them issue a couple of penalties (if caught, you must dismount at the end of the lap you’re on and do one minute in the penalty box: game over, basically, if you want to be competitive). The course is mighty hilly. The first half of each lap just sees you climb up and up, before you do a dead turn then hurtle back down the motorway.  I love a good climb and always make gains on uphill sections, but I usually lose it on the downhills, especially if technical like at Slateman, as I am too nervous. This motorway though is ideal: wide, smooth tarmac, a nice gradient, I put the hammer down and manage to hit speeds of 40mph on the descent. Lively feels great and no one overtakes me on the descent, not even the blokes. The wind gusts and is particularly strong as you leave the town and cross a bridge; gusting crosswinds hit you from the right, but I feel in control and ride confidently through it. I later find I have posted the fastest bike split of the day in my age group – not something I would have predicted before the race as I am very much a newbie cyclist and some of the girls in my category have cycling backgrounds and race regularly on the crit and road racing circuit. I think the course just suited me.

Hold on for the second run. I tend to run well off a bike and my average speed for my second run was faster than for my first as my legs have finally got going! On the approach to the finish, the GB Team Managers, Joan and Glyn, are handing out union jacks. I grab a flag and run down the blue carpet to the finish line holding it aloft. What a special moment! I have absolutely no idea how I have done or where I have placed as there were athletes everywhere. Right at that moment, I am happy just to have finished, All this build up, all the time and money expended in just getting here, I was so worried accident, injury or a mechanical would prevent me from completing and make the whole trip a farce. I later find out from the live results streaming that I came 11^th female overall and 2^nd in my age group, so I’ve won a silver medal! I am both elated, shocked, proud and a whole other bunch of emotions rolled into one. Me being me, I’m also panicking: ‘What if I didn’t put my helmet back in my box in T2 and they DQ me?’ Matt tries to reassure me, but until the results are confirmed, I keep thinking it can’t be real and someone’s going to say it’s a mistake, no medal for you.

Later that night, at the medal ceremony, it becomes real. I get to stand on the podium in my GB kit, holding a GB flag, and receive my medal. A magical moment. Then comes party number 3: the biggest yet. Free food, free drink, and then the band start setting up in the square at 10:30pm…. This one goes on until 5am Monday morning, but I don’t care, I’m too excited to sleep anyway. I lay there with my medal on my bedside table next to me, reflecting on the race, and, unusually for me, I don’t think ‘I could have done better, I could have got gold’, I think, ‘Yeh, you done good kidder; girl done good’.

The next morning we travelled to Madrid and spent four nights there unwinding and sight-seeing and, finally, I got the weather I was expecting of sunny Spain: temperatures of 25 – 30 degrees and full sun every day. Post-race refuelling came courtesy of coffee, cava and chocolate covered churros. All the Cs.

Thanks as ever to my chief supporter, organiser, driver, bag carrier and companion on this amazing adventure: my wonderful husband Matt. Without his belief, support and encouragement, I wouldn’t be doing any of this. Thank you.

And well done to my SWRR team mate, Sam Hopton, and my N1 Tri Club team mate, Jake Smith, for their fantastic performances in Soria. Sam smashed the bike and Jake smashed the run and they both had a great time too.

The podium finish pre-qualifies me for next year’s Euro’s (although I had already qualified at Clumber Park in March). It’s now confirmed as Ibiza…. Surely, it’s GOT to be warm and sunny there?!

Clumber Park #2... The Sequel

The problem with sequels is that, invariably, they do not live up to the expectation of the original. 

As a rule, I generally avoid returning to the same triathlon or duathlon events, for several reasons. Firstly, there are just so many different ones out there to try and they are often so far away and so costly to compete in, that Matt and I try to make a mini-break out of them, so it’s always nice to try new events in new places to give us a reason to visit parts of the UK we might not otherwise see. Secondly, it’s nice to not have to compare your performances: I got very caught up with chasing PBs on flat tarmac road races as a runner and that often led to disappointment, not to mention injury. Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, if I had a super time at an event, it holds special memories for me, and I am worried that by going back and having not such a super time, those positive memories might get undermined by fresh, less positive ones! For this reason, I was extremely wary when choosing to return to Clumber Park as my performance there last year, in the 2016 sprint race, far exceeded my own expectations. I went there hoping for the outside chance of sneaking into the top four in my age group in order to secure one of the four GB team qualification spots for the European Duathlon Championships. I did not expect to place 6^th female overall and to win my age group and was staggered when my name was announced at prize giving (this was the only time I have ever cried and got emotional at any sporting performance, as it was just so unexpected; I kept thinking they’d made a mistake!). Fast-forward to this year and now, because of last year’s result and because of me being me, my expectations had gone through the roof. Gone was the ‘I’ll be satisfied just to qualify’ goal: my expectation was to qualify and to win my age group again; satisfaction would be placing in the top three females overall. A big ask, but it was what I secretly went there aiming for.

I had not had as good a build up as I had the previous year. Aside from the 8 week long cold-cough combo I picked up at Christmas that turned into a chest infection and sinusitis, eventually, needing antibiotics to clear, I had also struggled with that familiar left achillies problem for all of summer and most of autumn into winter. It was only 4 weeks out from the race that I managed to get my weekly running mileage up into the twenties and I managed to complete just one intervals session: a pathetic 3 x 800m at 6m/m pace. Not quite the sessions many of my rivals would have been hitting in their preparation. At Clumber last year, I posted the fastest first run split in my wave…. that was not looking very likely this year. However, I had tried to keep up the cycling a bit more this winter: not easy when the weather is rubbish and you are ill for weeks on end, but I did manage a few 20 – 30 mile outings on Cannondale in addition to 2 – 3 spin classes a week, which kept me ticking over.

So, why did I return to Clumber? Well, it’s the only qualifying race for next year’s Euros to take place in the spring (the others are autumn events), so I wanted to get qualification out of the way early. Also, I haven’t raced multisport since Dartington Du last October, so I didn’t want the European Championships in Soria to be my very first race of the year; Clumber made for a good dress rehearsal. Then, finally, familiarity with the course at least means less stress in terms of worrying about what the transition layout is like, where the turnaround point on the run is, what the bike route is like etc. Also, Clumber is the hilliest of the 3 qualification events on offer, and me love me a good hill!

A week before the event, I had Cannondale serviced with Tony at Tribe Cycles (he also did my bike fits on both Cannondale and my Black Ninja Shiv TT bike). In hindsight, I should probably have allowed more time between getting the service and leaving for the event, as what I expected to just be a few tweaks on the gears and brake cables turned out to be a replacement of both the top and bottom brackets as the bearings had totally gone. It was quite a tight time scale for Tony to order the parts and to get it sorted, so thanks to him for going that extra mile and even visiting my house the night before we left for the race to make sure that Cannondale was race ready.

Off we went, on Friday, in good time to cover the 250 miles with a couple of stops and arrive at the hotel with enough time to relax and use the spa facilities before dinner. This year we stayed at the official race hotel, the Clumber Park Hotel and Spa. It was right on the bike route course and just a 10 minute drive from the event HQ. It was also a big hotel set up for dealing with 100+ duathletes wanting to take their beloved bikes into their rooms with them (you’d be surprised how many hotels we’ve stayed in have balked at the suggestion!), and they put on a special early breakfast on race morning. Oh, and the spa, the outdoor jacuzzi hot tubs overlooking the forest, the 15m swimming pool and the gym all added to the experience!

Home for the 3 nights: Clumber Park Hotel and Spa.

Race morning and I was feeling surprisingly relaxed: this was evidenced by me only needing three pre-race portaloo visits as opposed to the double-figures I hit last year! Maybe I was a bit too relaxed as I didn’t really feel fired up and, when the starting horn went, I was thinking, ‘Oh well, the quicker I get this done the quicker I can get back to the hotel and get in the hot tub’! In hindsight, I may have been a little over-tired come race day; as I had lost so much training time in January and February through illness, the three weeks in March leading up to race day had been high in volume and intensity in a last-minute bid to sharpen up.

I was in the very first wave to go off: female sprint race athletes aged 18-39. The vet 40 females + started 2 minutes after us, then came the senior men, then the vet men, followed by the standard distance duathletes after that. The problem with starting women first is that by the time we all get back to T1 after the run leg, the fast men are beginning to catch us; they then have to work their way through the field of females on the bike leg, often cutting it tight to overtake you, sometimes four abreast, making for some rather hairy moments on a bike course that is partly on a fast 60mph ‘A’ road that isn’t closed to traffic… I would far rather they let the guys go first and get them out of our way!

I arrived back from the first run as the third fastest in my wave, but only 10 seconds down on the leader, and just a second or two behind the second girl. My 5k run split was 19:20, so only 10 seconds down on last year: an encouraging start. I managed to overtake both girls in transition and so I headed out onto the bike as the first athlete of anyone out on the course….. This accolade was short lived as zoom, zoom, zoom, one by one, the speedy men on their fancy racing machines began to pick me off. It was a couple of miles into the course before any women came past me. Two flew past quite swiftly on TT bikes, but another girl overtook but didn’t pull away, so I decided to work off her to keep me focused. We then played cat and mouse for the whole 20k course, eventually pulling into T2 together, recording the same bike split. Emerging from T2, the announcer on the tannoy said I was third female overall in the sprint race… Buoyed by the thought that my goal of a top three finish overall might be within my grasp, I charged out of T2 thinking, ‘Just dig deep, only 10 minutes of running left, you can do this’. The second run was complete chaos, as slower standard distance athletes from later waves were on their second 5k lap of their first run, and men and women from the sprint distance were on their second 2.5k run. This meant different athletes were aiming for different turn around points, the marshalls didn’t seem to know who was in which race in order to direct us, and this is where I was mighty glad that I had done the race before and so knew the course. The girl I had been cycling with was hot on my tails; at the turn around I saw I had a 10 second or so gap on her. If I could avoid getting a stitch like last year, I think this could be in the bag. Approaching the finish, final check over my shoulder, the gap’s the same and I think I am good for a podium finish. Cross the line and momentary elation swiftly gives way to deflation as I see three other females have already finished ahead of me…. The guy on the tannoy had miscounted and I was in fact fourth out of T2 and fourth across the line. The first female finished 90 seconds ahead of me and 2^nd and 3^rd less than half a minute. My time this year was 17 seconds slower than last year; at first this disappointed me as I wanted to improve, but when I considered how windy it was on the bike, particularly the really strong headwind in the last 4-5 miles, I think this year was a slightly better performance. Also, as the overall winning times were well down on last year and as I finished further up the overall rankings, this would suggest that I did have a better race. No podium, but a definite improvement, so I have to take encouragement from that.

Somewhere out on the 20km bike leg.

Approaching the finish, thinking if I just managed to stay ahead of the girl behind me, I have secured 3rd place overall.... not quite so...

I wasn’t sure if I’d won my category or not; Matt thought I had a good chance as one female in front of me was in Nottingham University kit and looked a young 20-something, but the other two ladies could have been anywhere from 25 – 45, it’s hard to tell without blatantly strolling up and asking ‘Excuse me, how old are you?’! (Even I have limits!) So, like last year, we thought to wait for the presentation to find out…. only this year there wasn’t one. Standing around waiting for it for over an hour and finally the tannoy man – him again – comes on and says that the timing equipment failed mid-race so there’ll be no presentation today and no online results until later that weekend. A somewhat anti-climatic end to the day, but what can you do? A check of the salvaged results from their restored back-up timing the following day revealed that I had won my category and so prizes are being posted out…. haven’t had it yet, and will be interesting to see if they post the large 24 pack of Erdinger that the sponsor provides to all the winners, but we’ll see!

In fact, as organisers go, I’m not overly convinced by OSB races. You pay through the nose to enter (just shy of £50), and all you get for completing is this:

 A “beanie” hat, apparently. We’ll ignore the fact it is more sleeping-bag than beanie sized. No finishers medal, no tee-shirt, the bloody thing looks hideous, it doesn’t advertise the event (only the company), and doesn’t even fit! I overheard many comments that the race might be fine at the competitive end for those of us mainly using it to seek qualification, but it offers nothing to the mass participant seeking a personal challenge from it. Where’s their long-lasting race memento that they can wear with pride to remind them of their achievement? …. Oh yeh, it’s on the teapot keeping the tea cosy… Seriously OSB, how big do you think duathletes heads are?!

So, I think this means that, sadly, there will be no Clumber Park #3. Time for a change next year and maybe tackle a new course and, ideally, one that doesn’t take the best part of 8 hours driving to get to as you sit for an hour each way in traffic on the M42 trying to get around Birmingham.

I now have 4 weeks to get fit for Soria. Unfortunately my right calf (yes, that’s my “good” leg, the one I can usually rely on not to give me stick) did not come away from the weekend in the best shape. It’s on the mend but has meant 10 days without running to make sure the niggle didn’t develop, so that’s lost running training that I can’t really afford to lose as I'm already down on where I should be (ah.... t'was ever thus...) But I am really looking forward to the Europeans now, to getting out there and seeing what I can do against a top quality field. And next year? Well, there is a very strong rumour going around that the 2018 Europeans will be held in Ibiza… that thought makes my heart sing.

Thanks to:
Tony Arnell at Tribe Cycles for getting Cannondale race ready
Olivia Higginson at Body Masterplan for getting my body race ready
To my buddies at N1 Tri Club for their support, friendship and motivation to keep training over the winter
To my family who support what I do and take an interest in what I do (or at least pretend to)
And to Matt, my long suffering husband, for standing by me, supporting me, driving me here there and everywhere across the country to races... and for funding it all!

Let's talk about swimming....

Swimming and me are not the best of friends at the moment. Much of that is down to the fact that I’ve had this lingering cough / cold for almost 6 weeks, and I never swim well with a cold as I just can’t settle my breathing, but much of it is also born out of frustration that I am just not getting any quicker. When I first “cracked” front crawl I made big improvements in a short space of time, as suddenly I dispensed with my breaststroke recovery length every other 25 meters and replaced it with a much faster stroke. Naturally, my times soon came tumbling down from 8:45 for 400m to my best, set in October 2015, of 7:04. At that point, almost every time trial marked a new PB; very invigorating as I hadn’t been setting any of those in running for a couple of years. Following my 7:04 I thought it was inevitable that, upon my next attempt, I would be hitting the sub 7s. Hasn’t happened. I have banged out several times in the region of 7:10 but I seemingly cannot break that magical 7 minute barrier. Most of this is down to technique, as there are swimmers in my tri club with inferior fitness levels than me on dry land who absolutely annihilate me in the water. The main point of frustration is that I do know what I am doing wrong – catch is too flat, using my hand to push me up on the water to help support my head as I breathe, arm too deep and straight in the water on the pull through, and stroke too short giving away valuable thrust at the back end… amongst other faults! Apparently, from above the water, I look like one of the most stylish swimmers in the pool, but, just like a swan who looks sublime and majestic on the surface, underneath the illusion is shattered and I possess all the grace of a drowning cat…

#Insert various images of me swimming badly in pretty locations below....

Vilamendoo, Maldives, 2014.

Vilamendhoo, Maldives, 2016

On the reef, Vilamendoo, Maldives, 2016.

Vilamendoo, 2016

Roadford Relays, Oct. 2016

Truth is, I don’t really know how to make further improvements. I have had valuable input from a couple of coaches at my club, including my good friend Anne, who is eternally patient (though even she had to concede defeat on attempting to teach me to tumble turn!). Anne has given me innumerable drills to help me perfect my catch and follow-through, but I find if I do things correctly, I suddenly end up swallowing half the pool as my head is in the wrong position to breathe. Basically, I have developed my own crappy technique to help combat my own crappy technique… it’s a vicious circle!

These woes are not isolated to me: I am one of a number of people in tri clubs all over the land to suffer this affliction. It is basically the curse of the middle lane! Whether swimming in lane 3 of 5 at Honiton swims, or in lane 2 of 3 at Sidmouth, I am always the middle of the pack: too fit for the slow lane, too crap technique-wise for the fast. The middle lane is generally populated by talented  land-based athletes who have taken up swimming as adults or who, like me, swam as children but then gave it up and have only revisited it because it is a compulsory element of triathlon. We rely on our high fitness levels to muscle our way though the one hour long swim set, in the classic manner of a 'Swim Smooth' Arnie fighting the water! 

I have recently been so demotivated with it all, I just dread having to go to the pool as I know it’s an unpleasant and frustrating experience every time. So, to motivate me, I decided to sign up to a 5k swimathon…. Yes, 5km in a pool…. 200 tedious lengths. It will take me the best part of 2 hours to complete. It seemed like a good idea at the time to give me the impetus I need to get down the pool and train, but I am secretly dreading it and delaying starting training for it. However, I need to improve my swim if I am to be competitive in the triathlons I have planned this year. Last night I finalised my 2017 race schedule and have decided on the following key races:

Clumber Park Sprint Duathlon and ETU qualifier, Nottingham – March

European Sprint Duathlon Championships, Soria, Spain – April

The Immortal Sprint Triathlon, Stourhead, Wiltshire – May

The New Forest Standard Distance Triathlon, Ringwood – June

Honiton Sprint Triathlon – July

The Brutal Half, Llanberis, North Wales – September

Yes, yes, after Slateman I said never again to cycling around Snowdon in a hail storm clad only in a glorified swim-suit…. but the truth is, I secretly loved it (once it was over and I was back home in the warm with a glass of prosecco in hand, that is). There is a part of me that is a shade sadistic and loves a personal challenge. I saw the Brutal on a programme on TV, when the presenter - a former Welsh rugby player - took part in a series of insane endurance challenges. It instantly peaked my interest because it’s in my beloved Llanberis. What does the race entail? Well, it’s a half-iron, also known as middle distance race, and involves a 1900m 2 lap swim in Llyn Padarn, followed by a 60 mile cycle on the Snowdonia Marathon route, circumnavigating Mount Snowdon twice, then just a 14.5 miles run to finish with…. Oh, which happens to include a full ascent and descent of Mount Snowdon up the Llanberis Path. Just my cup of tea… ahem, panad. Sounds slightly challenging right? Well, not so when you consider that this is in fact the shortest of four available distances on offer at this ”Brutal Fest” , all starting at the same time on the same day. I should be done in a taxing but achievable 8 ish hours.  There is the Full Brutal (an iron distance race, doubling up on everything I’m doing); there is a Double Brutal (4 times what I am doing), and, new for this year for the completely mentally insane, the Triple Brutal (you do the math!). So, I will really only be taking on the “sprint” distance, so no chance of whinging and whining about feeling cold and miserable this time as I will have it easy and my moans would be met with much disdain by my fellow Brutalers.

Ever since taking up triathlon in summer 2015, I have had this trajectory in mind: sprints in 2015, standards (olympics) in 2016, building up to a half iron in 2017. Due to personal circumstances, I wasn't sure if that would happen this year, but I need a goal to stay focussed on training, so I have decided to plan for it and build towards it, and, if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. No biggie. There'll be other Brutals (or things equally as brutal) for me to torture myself with... er, sorry, I meant, enjoy, in future years. :-)

This amazing setting will again be the aquatic stage for the 1900m Brutal swim.

Training wise, I intend to get Soria out of the way first as it demands a very different training schedule, with the onus being on short, fast efforts. Then, come May, I will start to ramp up the biking and running miles, the latter of which will mainly be longer, slower off road runs as all four of my planned triathlon event runs are on trails, thus avoiding the pounding on tarmac, about which my lower limbs doth protest too much. I guess I also need to do a bit of swim training between now and then… onus on 'a bit'. See you at the pool! ;-)