First triathlon of the season at the Universities Sprint Triathlon Championships which were organised at the St. Mary's School grounds down in Calne. Distances were 750m pool swim, followed by 25km cycling and 5km of running. The race was a time trial format with waves, so the race started at 11.30 am with the first wave and they had waves up till 4pm. In each wave you had 4 swimmers in each lane swimming at the same time with 10sec starting intervals. This turned out to be quite challenging at times.
I started off the 750m at a good tempo and felt good all the way. The swimmers in my lane were much slower so I was lapping them and this made me wonder if I guess my current 750m time as it seemed that my allocated wave was a bit slower than I expected. Out of the water in 10.43 on my watch made me realise that, 'crap.. should have got in a faster wave,' this was a something that effected my performance throughout the whole race.
A quick transition saw me out on the bike course in a few seconds. I caught a couple of guys in the first 3km of the bike ride and that was it, a lonely 25km Time Trial in some really strong winds. It took me some time to get into my pace and the wind was not helping much. I was praying to go round a corner and have the wind behind me but that didn't happen until half way, after that it was all about turning a big gear and trying to get my average speed up to a respectable figure.
After another good transition I went out on the run trying to do my best to keep a strong pace going. Unfortunately after about 1km I went the wrong way as that part of the course wasn't marked well and I lost quite a bit of time which showed in my 19,36 split time. I still kept pushing the pace until the end to finish with a time of 1hr 14mins 10sec for 29th overall out of 280 participants. My initial target was a top 20 which unfortunately I didn't manage to achieve but it was a better result than my Duathlon Championships in November so I can go back to my training with that in mind and work hard for the next races.
I would firstly like to thank Louie and John for making the weekend so special for taking care of us (Johanna and myself). Also a special thank-you goes Bill and Pam for their constant help and support without which I would be doing very little, and Johanna's support!!
Dermot
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