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.
No comments:
Post a Comment