Bala Triathlon
The 12th September 2010 was to be my last race of this season and including this, the Bala Triathlon, I have competed in 3 countries and in England: 3 counties. Bala is on the outskirts of Snowdonia in Wales and the beautiful scenery made for a lovely last hour of the 4 hour drive from Bury, including the excitement of dodging suicidal sheep wandering in the road off the mountainside!
I arrived at the campsite on the edge of the lake at around 1pm, parked the camper and plugged it in... oh yes... no more cold nights under canvas for me, it’s creature comforts all the way! So I put on a dvd and awaited the arrival of Julia Jepson and Paul Horsley who arrived around half two. We reserved a pitch next to my camper and headed down to the sports centre to register. With registration complete we headed back to the campsite to pitch Paul and Julia’s tent, I put the kettle on and we enjoyed a cup of tea with a Garibaldi before getting ready to head out for dinner. Paul had had the foresight to book a table in a pasta restaurant in the village which was named Express Pizza. They had a logo that bore a striking resemblance to a chain by a not too dissimilar name!! Fed and watered we returned to the campsite. On the way back we drove the bike course to make sure there weren’t any nasty surprises on route and, upon arriving back to our temporary home, turned in for the night.
I awoke in the morning to a knock on the window of the camper from Paul offering a cup of tea. I looked at my watch and swiftly realised that, at 7am, time was dangerously close to the 8:45 race briefing and I still had to take care of ablutions, prep the bike and the rest of my kit before riding down to the sports centre to get my timing chip and markings! With everything prepared in the speediest of speedy fashions I made a last minute decision, as it was the last race for me this season, to ditch the repair kit in the vain hope that saving those few extra grams would make the world of difference. The bike course was a 20k out and back on the same closed road so if the worst happened I could trudge gloomily back to the start hoping the broom wagon would pick me up on the way! Paul kindly drove our kit boxes down while Julia and I clipped in and rode the 3 miles or so to the start. Once down there we racked the bikes and headed in to get the timing chips and markings. Race briefing was slightly later than advertised due to a lack of timing chip bands but once more were found competitors were shepherded to the transition area with haste. With the race briefing complete I soon found myself stood at the water’s edge trussed up in black rubber with 250 or so others resembling what I would imagine the January sales queues to look like outside Gimps-r-us!! We were instructed to enter the water and waded towards the start line where we stood waist high in the water, now this is a little out of the ordinary I thought, usually I'm treading water at the start line!
HOOONK... the first wave was off! I decided I would keep wide so as not to get in too much of a scrap and in deciding so promptly got an elbow in my right eye which induced severe goggle compression on the right side. I panicked as I envisaged my eyeball being sucked right out under the extreme pressure, I paused to release the pressure and got going. Once under way I very quickly came to the conclusion that this wasn’t going to be the end of season PB swim I was hoping for. The lake was that shallow that I had to adjust the depth of my stroke after the first few nearly removed skin as I hit the rocks below. After about 100m we were out of the shallows and in to deeper water however I had taken a wider line than I would have liked and found myself 30 or 40 metres to the right of the buoys. That said, I wasn’t alone and there were swimmers further to my right. Around 100 metres to the first turning buoy it started to get a little choppy and I found myself only getting half a breath on occasions having not lifted my head high enough from the water. The wide berth meant I had further to swim to reach the turn buoy and at the second turn buoy decided I needed to stay closer on the home leg. That said I was still probably 20 metres from the buoys. As we approached the shore it got shallow fairly quickly and once again I was striking the rocks below with each stroke. Shortening my stroke I got in as close as I thought possible and stood up in the thigh deep water to bound ashore heroically however bounding was not on the cards. The rocky floor was made more for tentative hobbling as the marshalls at the gang plank gestured us back down in to the water. This I tried with breaststroke however found myself not really getting there any quicker, so once again stood up and resigned myself to the tentative hobbling technique! I exited my particularly shoddy swim in 500th place after 33 minutes. Once out of the water I went directly to my racking point without any fuss having made a mental note of the land marks around it, with a reasonably swift transition in 1m 04s I entered the bike course. Knowing the course was smooth, fairly flat and free from holes gave me the confidence to press on hard from the outset and I started taking scalps as soon as I hit the course. As mentioned earlier it was a single, closed, road course 20k out and back. A 180 degree hairpin that had an over-run in to a junction made riders slow down and take care on the slightly damp surface before the return leg, although I saw at least 3 athletes with horrendous gravel rash who clearly didn’t take enough care! I tried to push even harder on the return leg knowing that the run was a strong discipline for me although I’m still trying to find that perfect balance of going hard enough on the bike but not so hard as to detract from the run. I flew in to transition making sure I dismounted in plenty of time for the dismount line completing the bike leg in 1:03:50. I dispensed with T2 in 43 seconds and headed out to the run course which ran along the bike course parallel to the lake and in to the campsite we were staying at and back. I settled in to a decent pace fairly early ignoring the first water stop, at this stage of the race taking on water is not going to benefit me at all and will just lose time. About 4k in I felt like I had a twig in my left shoe under my toes which I was battling with mentally as to whether to stop but when I felt a small stone under the insole by the knuckle of my big toe in the same shoe I decided it would have to come off. I continued running pulling out the insole and ensuring no foreign bodies remained and put the shoe back on. Within 20 metres I had a similar feeling in the right shoe, so repeated the process. Despite this it still felt like there was something there so I think perhaps it was all in my head, anyway I’d been passed by a couple of people whilst fiddling about with my shoe. I suppose it’s to be expected when you’re running slightly lop-sided in one shoe but I had to get those places back and that I did plus plenty more. Around 7-8k I felt the twinge I had at Bedford on the muscles on the inside of my thighs just above my knees. Knowing that I managed to run through it previously I forced myself on at the same pace. I had collected water at the remaining two stops which were dispensed over my head for cooling purposes! I looked across to my right on the close of the run and could see I was approaching level with the turn buoy from the swim, I knew I only had a short distance to go. I turned the corner to the cheering of the crowds as I approached the finish and as I entered the complex I could see the inflatable finish line. I put in one final adrenalin filled burst only to turn the corner and see the pesky organisers had laid out a further 100 or so metres more, through uneven puddle ridden ground. I was spent and couldn’t continue that pace and slowed but then convinced myself to take my balls out of my mother’s purse and have one, and this time final, blast. I crossed the line to finish in a total time of 2:20:13 placing me 201st over all, not bad considering I came out of the swim in 500th! Unfortunately nowhere near quick enough to qualify for my GB age group but it’s my first season so let’s see what next year brings!!
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Last Updated (Wednesday, 22 September 2010 12:05)