Gra seemed to have been stitched up on this one but with good results…
Two people sold this race to me, then neither of them bothered to race the whole thing on the day as one was part of one of the relay teams & the other was working with the organisers, so I was a bit disappointed not to have a head to head with them.
We had a very early start, i.e. 4:50am, because registration & racking had to be done between 6 & 6:30am!!! Luckily the event was only 15 minutes drive away from home so that was one saving grace I suppose, in that we didn’t have to get up any earlier.
We arrived at DL to find that we were the third people to get parked up in the car park so registered & got racked up in plenty of time. There was only a small field of 57 competitors, three of those 57 were relay teams though. We had also found out that this event had been hastily organised with the help of Richard & Jo Isles from Race New Forest.
I was in the 3rd wave, which was due to start at 7:25am, with all of the quick boys & girls. The swim had a very strange set up. We had to swim up & down the pool but when we reached lane end we had to dive underneath the lane rope & continue doing this until we had completed eight lengths, then we got out of the pool, walked to the other side of the pool, got back in & repeated it all again, to complete 400mtrs (Coach 2 is laughing at this whilst typing, because she was totally unaware of what was going because she was Transition Chief Marshall & making sure that everyone obeyed the rules).
Out of the swim & ran around the back of DL to transition for T1. I had decided that as the temperature was a bit chilly at 7am, & as I have got bigger fish to fry this season, I decided to put socks, a winter Synergie jacket & gloves on – I wasn’t going to get cold for anyone. I then had a long run out of transition & out to the road before mounting the bike, to do the 15 mile bike ride around Sopley, Bransgore & back. The only issue with the bike ride was that I had to stop at the temporary traffic lights at Bransgore which lost me a good minute & then I was caught & overtaken by one person. I was unable to catch him as he was just annoyingly 200mtrs in front of me & not coming back at all.
Into T2 for a sort of quickish transition, then out onto the 5K run which had a mixture of pavement & gravel tracks on the outskirts of Ringwood. It felt like everything seemed to be running quite well until some guy came flying past me & this guy got second place overall. All in all, it was a good little Sunday morning event & very well organised.
My splits are as follows:
Swim & T1 – 07:54
Bike – 44:09
T2 – 29.50
Run – 20:27.15 0
Overall time – 1:13:01
Overall position was 4th & came 1st in my age group (50-59)
Gra
PS: While eating my complimentary breakfast & listening to the results, I nearly chocked on my scrambled egg when Richard announced that I had won my age group – very surprised indeed. I bling & lots of other stuff as well so it was definitely worth getting up for ? I would also like to say a big Thank You to Coach 2 too.