Seasons End

as a New Years resolution I set myself the challenge of doing a triathlon this year... I ended up doing 5, and it's probably kept me sane as I've been continually pestered with leg injuries.

Last night was the final triathlon of the season... Tough gig, with sporadic showers, wet tarmac, and a nasty bit of wind from the remnants of Hurricane Bill. To complicate matters, traffic was atrocious (apparently an accident on the M3/M25 had clogged up everything, and overloaded the A-Roads), so I arrived at Dorney Lake while Gill and all my kit was grid-locked in Bracknell. While I quietly panicked Gill did sterling work getting through, and the race organisers decided to delay all the waves by 15 minutes, to give everyone time to arrive, so I ended up getting all my kit into transition, and having a vague semblance of preparing before the off.

Weather doesn't really affect the swimming bit too much, and I went for a different tactic this time, positioning myself right on the far end of the starting pack, giving me more clear water, sacrificing a bit of distance. The end result was less fisticuffs, and more chance to get into rhythm. Once again most people went wide on the return leg, and I had a clear run back in, ending up PB'ing the swim route in 13.26...

...which I promptly wasted by going onto the wrong rack in transition, and running around for a minute before finding my bike :-( That minute ended up costing me 10 places, and really highlights that I need to start taking transition more seriously. Once out on the bike it was time to face the breeze, with the outward leg of the 6 laps almost directly into it. This was the new bike's first outing, and it performed admirably...no-one overtook me, and I think I made up a fair number of places. I ended up slightly slower than the last race on the bike (32.54), however conditions were certainly against me this time, and once I almost came a cropper, coming into a corner far too fast, and coming out of it just a bit too sideways.

The run I was slightly gutted about...really pushed myself, after being chastised last time for running with someone else and chatting with them, however I came in about a minute slower (21.50), which is frankly awful, given that I've done sub 18 minute 5k runs before now...definitely something to work on over winter.

Final position was 44th, from about 350. It's OK, and hard to fully judge, as the final wave had a better time of it on the bike, as the wind was dying down, however next year I really want to start getting into the top 10%. Plan now is to take a week off cycling, to let my knee start recovering, and then start work on winter training.