Hello everyone! I am writing this post a bit later than planned due to a combination of laziness and being busy sorting everything out before leaving for America. The time since my last post has been filled with a race at the Bedford classic triathlon (olympic distance), saying farewell to friends, a minimal amount of training, and Packing! I'll start with the race as its by far the most interesting out of the above.
The Bedford Classic Triathlon
This race is an olympic distance (1.5k/40k/10k) that took place on the 29th of July this year in sunny Bedford, the swim was an out & back route in the river running through the town country park up to the main bridge and back again, the bike course was a single, flat loop through the countryside with a few lumps (nothing major) and the run was 3 flat laps around the riverside and crossing a bridge at each end constituted the only climbing reqiured on the course. You'll notice a similar trend on the description of this race as I did- FLAT, which in my mind is meant to mean FAST! It was also an ETU 2013 qualifying race so there would be a good field to race against.
The race didnt really go to plan for me however, despite my best efforts. The week leading up to race day I actually tapered properly (by my standards anyway) and clocked up around 10 hours of training all together, mainly race pace sessions on the bike out on the road, running around ladywell park @ planned pace on Friday & track with Kent AC on Tuesday and a few swims in Charlton Lido and with my club. I skipped out on the usual 'filler' sessions I do at a steady intensity to boost the mileage in each sport and eventually (read: hopefully..) yield long term gains by founding the aerobic base I missed out on during my later teenage years (building more of a carbon-monoxide/tar/alcogol foundation during those years ;) )
So I was feeling pretty confident on race day, I positioned myself well in the swim but soon after the gun I realised that unless I managed to get on the front line then I would encounter a fair amount of biff. As it went - I was on the 2nd line in the narrow river when the flag dropped, not having the confidence to go right to the front- fool! I was soon swamped by the 100 or so swimmers behind me trying to sprint to the same place as each other, I literally couldn't get my arms out of the water to start and made my way over the side til the madness subsided. I waited about 10 seconds then I thought- I'm not going to lose any more time, just get in there and swim through them all! I sought out the biff that I had just hidden from and found I was a lot better at giving it than taking it and got into a good rhythm soon after. Fortunately it didn't take long for the adrenaline fueled super-swimming exhibited by most at the start of the race to wear off and the field was very strung out after the first 200m, I managed to swim through them all and join a decent group of 2 other swimmers on the way back. The only problems I encountered on the way back were not being able to see due to the sun being in our eyes, we managed to move into the shade during the final 400m of the swim though and fortunately didn't overshoot the exit ramp!
The swim time came out as around 24 minutes including a 50m+ run to transition, I wasn't very happy with this when I saw the time later as I have been training to swim 1500m in around 22 minutes and have done so this season already with a 400m p.b of 5:40... Oh well!
Once on the bike I knew I wasn't going to have a good day, I felt absolutely awful for the first 20 minutes, my legs became very sore as if they had no blood in them and couldn't get the power (that I had been holding with relative ease during the week on race pace sessions) up at all. It wasn't until climbing one of the few sharp hills on the route that I started to come good, I decided to stop looking at my power meter as it was making me depressed and just went on feel- this coincided with the sudden revival of my legs somehow, maybe I'll just race completely on feel next time. I also believe that the short hill which I went up quite hard possibly 'woke' my legs up and got them used to a harder effort.
The run started off quite well but just went downhill after the first of 3 laps, I had lost all my nutrition on the bike as I had cack-handedly cellotaped them on earlier and they just fell off about 10 minutes in to the bike. I ended up cramping horribly on the other 2 laps and having to run-walk the rest of the way.
Alas, this race did not prove to be the PB-setting scorcher I had hoped but I still really enjoyed it. The organisers at Galeforce events threw on a cracking race in lovely settings, the swim was one of the most scenic that I have ever done (not that I should have been paying attention to the scenery!), they got very lucky with the weather on the day and the announcer kept me amused for an hour in transition while waiting to go in the water. My only gripe is that the wave sizes were very big and caused problems for many during the swim in such a narrow canal, being an ETU qualifying event though would have meant that they received a lot of sign ups and probably had a load of other regulations to contend with in that context.
The Final Week
My last week before heading to the States for 10 months! It was spent mainly resting and being sick, on Monday night I started to feel stomach pain and was preparing myself for another bout of gastroenteritis after having suffered it once after a 10km river swim (although that was in the Thames and I was lucky to escape with just that really!) The illness persisted through the week and interrupted most of the training I had planned, I wasn't too fussed about this really as my season ended on Sunday after Bedford and I find it difficult to do any tough sessions without a race on the horizon. By the next Monday it had cleared up though and my fears of having something more serious than a tummy bug subsided (seriously, it brought out the hypochondriac in me- Big Time).
Saturday night was my farewell-do with friends and club mates, I had a fantastic evening- Mo Farah won the Olympic 10k for us to improve our night- and realised just how much I will miss everyone while I am gone. Triathlon is obviously a big part of my life and I spend a lot of my free time training for it, without the inspiring, challenging group of clubmates I am honoured to share the pool with twice a week I will find it hard to keep motivated this year. I'm hoping one or two of my friends will be able to come out and visit me while I'm away after our exams are over. The next big task on the horizon, apart from getting safely to San Francisco, will be finding a place to live in with my 3 uni-friends also on the exchange as we were hoping to share a house together, hopefully it wont be as complicated as I'm dreading...
Til the next one!
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