So I should be posting about getting my collar bone fixed, but that needs writing from scratch while this is one of several that has been sitting in draft waiting for me to click the publish button for a while.
Alford Novice is a very short race. In all honesty I shouldn't have been racing it, for a couple of reasons. It was organised by Threepeaks Triathletes so I should really have been helping out with organising, or marshalling, or something similarly useful. Also it is meant for beginners and I am now 3 years in so it's hard to justify competing in such a short race. But, it is one of the few races that I did last year that would give me a fair comparison of what shape I was in, so I signed up to race and did a bit of helping out afterwards.
I was hoping to swim under 7 minutes for the first time. It is a short pool, which means lots of turns. That noramlly works well for me. Also the previous year I had a good lane draw with three others who were 5-15 secs quicker than me so I got a nice tow. This year I didn't get anyone to draft behind. The other two in my lane both being juniors. One of them was slightly slower than me, but not enough to take a lap, and the other one quickly resorted to backstroke and I caught and overtook him twice.
This was not the first time I have been given a lane with a backstroker. (Wasn't even the first time this season, nor the last). It was the first time that I have been older than the combined ages of everyone else in my lane. OK, there were only two of them, but scarily enough you could probably have added a third and I would still have been older than their total.
Fortunately enough though they were both steady swimmers at a close enough level to me so there was minimal overtaking required and I was out of the water in a decent time. Just outside 7minutes including the short section to the timing mats. I figured I was about 6th or 7th out of the pool.
I had hoped (ok, expected) to be out of the pool in front of an old running friend of mine but arrived in transition to find him already putting his shoes on. He was faffing about a bit though and despite stopping again after realising I forgot my race belt and number I managed a pretty smooth change and was out in front of him.
The bike course at Alford is three short loops, with a gentle climb round the first half and a gentle downhill on the way back. My biking is definitely a big step up from last year. Rather than just counting how many people pass me on the bike I do make places up. My friend was not one of those places. He was past me on the first rise and disappeared into the distance. A few others though, were not so lucky. I passed 4 comfortably on the downhill sections, and because the lap ends on a downhill the cat and mouse game I was playing with a 5th left me leading him going into second transition.
My second transition was as slick as the first one and I figured I was out with only my friend and one other from my heat in front of me.
The over-abundance of marshalls meant there was no point on the course that I was out of sight of them. I am pretty sure this was the most marshalled race I have ever done. And since I knew so many of them this was the first race in over a year that I was actually able to race properly without any sign of panic attack.
There were plenty of athletes from previous heats still out on the run course and I was overtaking people on the 3-lap run course. I caught the second guy out of my heat, leaving only my friend out in front. But he had half a lap on me from his 3minute faster bike section, and the run was always going to suit him better than me so I was chasing a lost cause trying to make any headway against him. With all the marshalls though I was managing to run properly and I only lost 30seconds to him on the run. I ended up in the top-20 for the first time this year. 8th in my age-group was also the highest I have placed for nearly 2 years.
Sunday 28 October 2012
Wednesday 24 October 2012
Big Bang
I wrote this the day after, then came back to hit publish and realised that it didnt make too much sense, probably because of the volume of painkillers I was on at that point. Anyway, I have run through it now and done a bit of an edit but it might still have some issues with past and present tense and the odd bit of drug-addled complexity that I have misssed:
I have been very lazy about writing here. I have a few race reports to write at least, especially after how well my last few races of this season were going. I am going to take them in reverse order.
So that brings me back to the blog title and the reason that I suddenly have plenty of spare time to catch up. Last race of my season (although it wasn't meant to be) was Nairn triathlon. Decent event, but it is a bit of a hassle going to Nairn and registering by 9:30 for a heat that wasn't due till 1:20. The timetable was a bit over-generous for warming up and plenty of competitors had guessed their swim times wide of the mark so everything was getting well ahead of schedule. But lack of a tannoy system meant several people were turning up as originally scheduled for the later heats, while the rest of us who were watching them get ahead of schedule waited impatiently for them.
The bike course wasn't the best. Right at the start it had a couple of stop junctions and these were followed up by a set of red traffic lights. If I had known I was getting a minute's rest this early in the bike I might have swum harder. Once out of town and into the country it improved slightly but it was too twisty and enclosed for such a fast flat course. Too many blind or obscured corners, and no passing places for the scarce, but impatient, traffic. During the second of three bike laps there was a sharp rain shower which dampened the roads, but it went away quickly so didn't make any major difference to the pace.
So this would be the point where things went somewhat awry. Turning on to lap 3 meant taking a left hander into a T-junction. There are some trees obscuring the view of the traffic after the turn (see link to streetview) but two other cyclists in front of me had clear runs at the corner so I took quite an aggressive line into the corner expecting to have plenty of road after the turn to keep my speed.
http://goo.gl/maps/ZBF3o
The lap counter marshalls were at this point, so the corner had three marshalls stationed on it. The road was a bit greasy from the rain shower so I was up off the tri bars slightly earlier than the previous lap in order to make the turn. I was already on the brakes for the turn when I spotted the car pulling up to the junction. I braked a bit harder to try and take the bend completely on the inside rather than crossing onto his side, and between the high speed, hard braking, tight turn, greasy roads, new brakes and new tyres I locked the back wheel.
The next quarter of a second or so was fairly memorable.
The bike took a big kick and the tail came out to the right into a skid. The wet road and slick tyres between them decided that the basic physical laws of friction should no longer apply to them. So travelling sideways at probably somewhere around 15 miles an hour I side-swiped the car. There was a big bang as my shoulder connected with the front windscreen pillar and my hip took out his wing mirror. In hindsight I think my hand hit the door bending the brake levers around slightly, the chain popped off the big ring and I was very lucky that my head didn't hit anything.
I hopped of the bike and managed to walk round for a few seconds while I tried catch my breath and to decide how serious a bump it was. Having decided I was still able to walk I was quite convinced that the bang must have been something on the car or bike getting dented, but a quick look showed them both to be intact. Most of my right side was aching by this point and I was struggling to breathe so I called at the marshalls to get the ambulance while I had a nice lie down in the roadside ditch.
The driver did check I was alive, but he didn't hang around much after that. Not blaming him. He was clearly in shock that some idiot had run into him. And in terms of driving before the accident he didn't do anything wrong to cause it. But despite the ambulance being sited on the course a couple of miles away he was gone by the time it arrived.
I had a bit of a feel around my shoulder, thinking it was probably dislocated. The big lump sticking out of it changed that diagnosis as it became obvious that I had snapped my collar bone. So I had a gentle lie back in the grass and waited for the ambulance while I watched the rest of the field flash past on their way to the finish.
I am going to do a separate blog covering the steps from lying in the ditch to where I am now. But it might contain some fairly gruesome pictures and will probably come with a warning in the intro for those without a stomach for bruises, scars and xrays.
I have been very lazy about writing here. I have a few race reports to write at least, especially after how well my last few races of this season were going. I am going to take them in reverse order.
So that brings me back to the blog title and the reason that I suddenly have plenty of spare time to catch up. Last race of my season (although it wasn't meant to be) was Nairn triathlon. Decent event, but it is a bit of a hassle going to Nairn and registering by 9:30 for a heat that wasn't due till 1:20. The timetable was a bit over-generous for warming up and plenty of competitors had guessed their swim times wide of the mark so everything was getting well ahead of schedule. But lack of a tannoy system meant several people were turning up as originally scheduled for the later heats, while the rest of us who were watching them get ahead of schedule waited impatiently for them.
The bike course wasn't the best. Right at the start it had a couple of stop junctions and these were followed up by a set of red traffic lights. If I had known I was getting a minute's rest this early in the bike I might have swum harder. Once out of town and into the country it improved slightly but it was too twisty and enclosed for such a fast flat course. Too many blind or obscured corners, and no passing places for the scarce, but impatient, traffic. During the second of three bike laps there was a sharp rain shower which dampened the roads, but it went away quickly so didn't make any major difference to the pace.
So this would be the point where things went somewhat awry. Turning on to lap 3 meant taking a left hander into a T-junction. There are some trees obscuring the view of the traffic after the turn (see link to streetview) but two other cyclists in front of me had clear runs at the corner so I took quite an aggressive line into the corner expecting to have plenty of road after the turn to keep my speed.
http://goo.gl/maps/ZBF3o
The lap counter marshalls were at this point, so the corner had three marshalls stationed on it. The road was a bit greasy from the rain shower so I was up off the tri bars slightly earlier than the previous lap in order to make the turn. I was already on the brakes for the turn when I spotted the car pulling up to the junction. I braked a bit harder to try and take the bend completely on the inside rather than crossing onto his side, and between the high speed, hard braking, tight turn, greasy roads, new brakes and new tyres I locked the back wheel.
The next quarter of a second or so was fairly memorable.
The bike took a big kick and the tail came out to the right into a skid. The wet road and slick tyres between them decided that the basic physical laws of friction should no longer apply to them. So travelling sideways at probably somewhere around 15 miles an hour I side-swiped the car. There was a big bang as my shoulder connected with the front windscreen pillar and my hip took out his wing mirror. In hindsight I think my hand hit the door bending the brake levers around slightly, the chain popped off the big ring and I was very lucky that my head didn't hit anything.
I hopped of the bike and managed to walk round for a few seconds while I tried catch my breath and to decide how serious a bump it was. Having decided I was still able to walk I was quite convinced that the bang must have been something on the car or bike getting dented, but a quick look showed them both to be intact. Most of my right side was aching by this point and I was struggling to breathe so I called at the marshalls to get the ambulance while I had a nice lie down in the roadside ditch.
The driver did check I was alive, but he didn't hang around much after that. Not blaming him. He was clearly in shock that some idiot had run into him. And in terms of driving before the accident he didn't do anything wrong to cause it. But despite the ambulance being sited on the course a couple of miles away he was gone by the time it arrived.
I had a bit of a feel around my shoulder, thinking it was probably dislocated. The big lump sticking out of it changed that diagnosis as it became obvious that I had snapped my collar bone. So I had a gentle lie back in the grass and waited for the ambulance while I watched the rest of the field flash past on their way to the finish.
I am going to do a separate blog covering the steps from lying in the ditch to where I am now. But it might contain some fairly gruesome pictures and will probably come with a warning in the intro for those without a stomach for bruises, scars and xrays.
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