As the days rolled on, approaching race day, I was feeling very good. My training had been going well since my last race (Fritton), and the weather during the week had been getting better and better...
But, in a typically expected British sort of way, Sunday's forecast was looking wet!
Surprisingly, wet weather doesn't seem so bad, when you think that you're going to start of in a lake anyway.
My swimming has been going very well, recently, both pool and OW, so I was feeling well up for the first discipline...
IO started off well, not too hard and felt well within my limits, but pretty soon I began to feel like cramping in my quads! I backed off a touch and carried on. I didn't suffer anymore 'cramps', but was very disappointed, to see that I had in fact lost a further 2 minutes over my last race swim and that race had been almost 300m overly long!
Again, I had decided to persist with putting my shoes on the bike in transition, in a bid to speed T1 up. This appeared to work well this time, taking just 1:23 to get through transition and out on the bike.
It rained pretty much all through the bike leg, but had no real impact on the race, after all, it was raining for everyone else, too. There was a strong head wind on the outward leg of the course, too, which, coupled with a few wee climbs, was a bit of a draw on resources. The return leg was a flyer, though...
As I had been placed in Wave 3, I came out of the water behind quite a few other triathletes, and so I had quite a few slower cyclists out ahead of me, which gave some great 'micro' targets to take my mind off the ride.
Into T2, and I was feeling good. Racked the bike and I was soon out on the run.
Again (like Fritton), I found breathing was very 'tight' for the first 3 km, then eased off nicely.
The run was muggy, with heaps of bloody flies about, which proved to hamper breathing quite a bit.
Again, a little disappointing to record a slightly slower run, than previous event, but, on the whole, it was a great event and I did my level best.
Back home, numbers crunched, it wasn't as bad as I had thought.
Back in training, again, and I'm feeling stronger than previous... Roll on the next race ;)
