Where to start?Should I start at 5pm on Saturday, having driven down to Worthing to register, looking at the sea, being very scared and driving back home again.
Or should I start at 3.15am on Sunday morning, waking up before the alarm and stumbling out of the house to the car in the dark.
Maybe it would be best to start at the beginning - 6:19am (only 3 hours after waking up) - standing on the shingle beach in my neoprene suit waiting for the klaxon, looking out at the murky and choppy English Channel.
The womens race had already started, so I could see how the waves and currents were throwing everyone off. Rather than the controlled flow of swimmers approaching the first turnaround buoy, there were bodies everywhere. When I got into the water I realised why - it was very difficult to see where I was going, and even when I tried a few strokes, I very quickly veered off course.
The first five minutes were the worst. The second five minutes I didn't like at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline. I randomly couldn't breathe because a wave was blocking my air, got lost in the swell, and frequently switched to breaststroke just to try and survive. We had to swim straight out into the channel, turn right at a huge orange buoy then swim down to another similar marker and finally just make our way back to the start.
I did make progress though, and from past experience knew I'd settle into things, and was bilaterally swimming fairly happily when I turned around for home. The water wasn't cold, but even so, it would have been nice to get out of it before the following wave of swimmers started overtaking me.
I was quite pleased to check into T1 in 35:26 - an OK 1500M time for me. I knew I was quite far back the field though, so headed out on the bike course with purpose. Unfortunately, I never got into my stride here either. My chain came off changing gears at the bottom of a steep incline. I just didn't seem to have the strength to push my average speed over 33km/h - which is pretty much what I finished with. The course was fairly standard - out some residential streets, through some country lanes, then out onto a big dual carriageway. Traffic at that ungodly time of a Sunday morning was light, and the turns were well signposted and marshalled. I made some good gains on the hills, but there were not nearly enough of them, or steep enough, for me to make a real dent in the placings. 1:14 was the finish time - it should have been faster.After a pretty speedy 49 second T2, I ran out onto Worthing promenade for the dead flat 10K run. Started with 3K wind assisted to the first turnaround, then 2K back into the wind which was pleasant as I was getting quite hot and the breeze was very welcome. I'd finally found my pace for the day and targeted people in front - picking them off one by one. Turned around again to get the tailwind and picked up the pace. I knew from my timings that I would need to do a sub-40 to get a 2:30 result. I didn't aim for that at all, but I could see people plodding in front of me, and wanted to beat them, so chased as many down as I could. One guy in an air force trisuit blatantly tried to draft me as we ran into the wind - I was able to give an extra kick to get rid of him :)
My running has been steadily improving all season - but I wasn't prepared for today's good result - 40:34. I did do a sub 20 5km time trial with my triathlon club on Wednesday, but that wasn't preceded by almost 2 hours of swimming and biking. I'm quite surprised at getting what is in fact my best ever 10K time by quite a large margin! Not complaining though :-)I even broke my Olympic triathlon record set in Windsor this year by about a minute with 2:32:15. So overall I had a great day out - I conquered the sea swim and ran faster than I ever have. My placing isn't great (21st in age group of 33 competitors) but that's partly due to a significantly high turnout of good people as this race is part of the Taut Triathlon National Ranking Series. I was 154th of 302 people who started the race.
It was great to meet up with fellow Evolution triathletes Zoe Spain and Oliver Perez. Zoe did brilliantly in her first ever Olympic triathlon, and Oliver missed a 3rd place in his age group by a very narrow margin. We even had team support from Charlotte Maurissen who took cheered us on took photos and brought refreshments to tired survivors. Thanks so much to her; it was all most welcome.
Executive summary - I survived it, and got an Olympic personal best time, and also a 10K PB. Not a bad day at the office.
Results are currently here.
Moved to here
