On Sunday I had the chance to don my race gear for my final multi-sport event of the season: a sprint triathlon in Roade, Northants.
Starting with a slightly-oddly distanced pool-based swim, Roade tri is an extremely popular event, especially for what is essentially a tiny town on the border between Bucks and Northants. This year, there were over 400 entrants across all the various age groups, which meant a buzzing atmosphere at the event’s school HQ but also a logistical nightmare in getting everyone competing (and parked!).
That meant wave starts in the four-lane, 23m pool – yes, 23m, not the universal, world-familiar 25m. As a result, instead of a 400m swim, we were faced with a 414m splash.
Personally, now that I’ve popped my open water cherry, I’m not keen on pool-based swim legs: the wave start meant that my race began at 11.51am whereas the overall event kicked off at 7.30am – it must have been a long old day for the organisers.
In terms of the actual swim itself, trying to gracefully manoeuvre yourself through 18 self-counted lengths becomes a bit tricky when you have to take into account the bow waves caused by the wild thrashings of your rivals. If they focused a bit more attention on a smooth entry, good glide in the stroke and less wasted energy, who knows what they might achieve.
Anyway, with a decent enough time of 7.04, I ranked 28th overall for the swim (out of 361 eventual finishers) and 2nd in my age group (out of 29). I was hoping for sub-6.30, but a solid start nonetheless.
However, I think it’s safe to say that the bike leg is where I could make the biggest improvements.
On paper, this was a fairly simple course: two laps of the nearly-10km route, whizzing through a couple of neighbouring villages before heading back into Roade.
The main drawback of starting an event so close to the middle of the day, is that you lose the freedom of the roads – an early start means that you’re usually done and dusted before normal people (that should be sensible people who prefer a Sunday morning lie-in to open water swimming and clip-in pedals), have even considered starting their day of rest.
As my 11.51 start time meant that I was clipping in and heading off at about midday, I had to take extra care at the road junctions on course and if there was traffic, then tough luck – in particular, this meant unclipping and waiting patiently at one point for a gap in the traffic big enough to squeeze my beautiful Bianchi into. At a guess, I’d say that this congestion probably caused me about 20 seconds, but it felt like a lifetime.
Anyway, with the bike completed in 38:57 (130th overall and a respectable 12th for my age group), and a leisurely transition, it was time to swing my number belt to the front and tackle the run.
I’m not sure how and when this occurred, but my running appears to be in reasonable shape at the moment – I collected my first parkrun PB for months a couple of weeks ago after good efforts in the sprint Tri at St Neots and the relocated Grafham Aquathlon.
Fortunately, I was able to carry that form to Roade and put in another pleasing performance – especially given that this felt like a tough course; two laps, firstly on the road through what seemed to be peoples’ front gardens, before reaching the end of the ‘out’ phase and embarking on the ‘back’, which ended in a quick lap around the school playing fields.
Right at the death of the run lap was a gruesome pair of hairpin bends, presumably to help make up the 4.5km distance – either that or just out of sheer spite by crushing the runners’ momentum – both half way through the leg and again right at the end; there is little worse on a tough, quick run than being faced with coming to a standstill and turning 180 degrees to go back to where you just came from.
Legs burning, heart pounding and lungs screaming – standard state of affairs for a sprint distance run – I managed to hang on through the seemingly never ending second lap and clock a very pleasing 17.08 for the run. As it turned out, that was the seventh quickest run from the whole field and 1st for my age group – and had I maintained that pace for a further 500m, it would have been on course for a 5km PB.
So, as you can see, my cycling continues to be my biggest area of opportunity – or, if you prefer, weakness.
Cycling appears to be the foundation for triathlon success – in terms of distance, it represents the vast majority of any race mathematically and that appears to also be the case, figuratively speaking, in terms of importance.
Nail the bike and you have a chance in most races: it seems much harder to cover up your performance on two wheels than the other disciplines. As an example, the overall 7th place finisher at Roade clocked a swim time nearly a minute slower than mine and a run slightly behind me – but registering the ninth quickest bike of the day gave him that single-digit finishing spot.
For the record, my overall positions were 6th for my age group, 47th male and 51st overall with a time of 1.05.53 – a shade over 12 minutes behind the overall winner and just over four minutes off first place for my age group. I’m really pleased with the overall performance, given my lack of experience at multi-sport and, particularly, cycling. But the potential for improvement and development is extremely exciting.
I genuinely believe that with enough commitment and dedication, anything is possible, especially when it’s something that brings so much joy and feels so worthwhile.
Looking at the results from Sunday, there was no-one ranked higher than me overall with a slower bike time than me: if I can improve my cycling sufficiently, without negatively impacting the other disciplines, then who knows what might be realistic.
But then I guess that’s the beauty and the pain of sport – the PB, podium or medal is always just beyond your reach and it can feel like the ultimate stretch to get there.