Hiatus

Wow – no blog posts for weeks and no real training either, my mind and body have been elsewhere with family and work which has been fab. The New Forest Middle Distance triathlon was a blast. It was a tough one to pick as a first half iron-distance race but the atmosphere was grand and the scenery stunning. My times were acceptable (with the usual exception of the swim) and I am keen to do a few more events of that distance. Here is a brief summary:

Swim: 50mins. I had deluded myself into thinking that 4 swims between June and September would be adequate preparation for a 1900m OW swim and hence I quite rightly had a poor start to the event. There were many positive things about the swim that I can look back on; I was still in a pack after 1K and was flitting left and right to grab a tow off someone. In my Sprint Triathlons I am usually dropped after 300m so I was feeling good. At the end of the first lap my left calf cramped up rapidly followed by my right calf. Having suffered this before and the subsequent muscular pain I struggled with for 2 weeks afterwards I was more concerned with finishing the Tri than getting a good time and hence I concentrated on clearing the cramp and not on swimming. So for the second 1000m I focussed on holding my feet in a position that eased the pain which meant I was quite slow and I emerged 36th out of 43 in my age group. T1 was very slow with a lot of time spent trying to get compression socks on over sand covered feet. I managed that in just under 5 minutes and got out on the bike.

Bike: 3:01. I had targeted a 3:15 bike in order to hit my 3:45 goal but as I had such a poor swim I decided to hit it slightly harder. The first 75Km were great as I overtook people. I calculated that I overtook around 150 people on the bike or around half the field. I passed a few people I knew on the bike leg and we had a brief chat which was great. The last 3-4Km involved a slight downhill into T2 and knowing I had pushed harder than planned I took it easy for this section. I caught Leo on that drag and we came into T2 pretty much together. Whilst changing from bike to run gear I overheard Leo telling the race marshall that he had hit a cow at 60Kmh and was in pretty bad shape. He looked OK to me so I didn’t feel too bad when I had a little giggle.

Run: 1:52. I had originally planned a 1:40 run but re-evaluated that when I heard about the run profile: “add ten minutes to your normal time” was the general advice. The first and last 1Km was on road then it was “on safari”. Through woods and plains the run was tough but very pretty. Some of the climbs were steep and up sand and I adopted a run walk strategy where I walked the hills and ran the rest. I caught around 30 people on the run and ran the 5th fastest in my age group to come in 8th out of 43 and 92nd of 330 total entries in a total time of 5:52.

I was shattered at the end and the event convinced me that I have no desire to enter a full Ironman race. It would take too much training and would hurt too much! After a bit of a rest a bunch of old friends came down and we stayed over in Poole for the night and went out on the town. The following day we went for a walk along the Dorset coast which was spectacular and ended up being around ten miles! Not an ideal warm down but great fun all the same.

Full stats for the New Forest Middle: