New Forest Sprint Tri 

Graham S, Ann & Graham P were all at at this one. Here is Graham S’ race report.

Myself & Coach 2 had to get up at stupid o’clock, i.e. 3:50am, because Richard & Jo, the Race Organisers, wanted Nikki on Registration for 5am.  The only good thing about this was that mine was the first bike into transition so I picked the best spot.  Once transition was set up I headed off for a little warm up & did my usual drills.  I then found a quiet corner just to contemplate what was about to happen.  This race involves a split transition so I left to headed off for the 15-20mins walk to the lake & on the way to the lake Scott & Di (probably the two best coaches in the country) went past me on their bikes.  It was nice to see them out again.

I started setting up at the swim transition, only to put my goggles on my head when the strap broke.  Panic then set it – have I got time to get all the way back to the car?  No.  I asked around but no-one had any spares with them (being in a split transition I just didn’t have my spare one(s) which I usually do with Coach 2, but she was back at the T1 on marshalling duty.  OK.  I just accepted that I would swim without any goggles so this was a first for me in a race.  It was on a 400mtr(ish) swim so I entered the water early just to try & get used to swimming without goggles.  The countdown started & oops, I went on “2” as I wanted to try to get every advantage I could think of without my goggles on.  Once I had gotten my head around this, it wasn’t too bad.

I exited the swim, wetsuit off & into the transition bag, a spare pair of run shoes on then exited the swim transition & legged it to T1.  I had a few people to chase along the lane but entered T1 & collected my trusted steed & off I went on a one lap 20 mile bike ride.  I overtook someone just by the mount line then just got on with the job in hand.  After about 10mins of riding I managed to catch & overtake another guy & then it was a fairly lonely ride back to T2.  Where were all of the good riders?  Why hadn’t they caught & passed me?

Into T2 for a rapid transition & headed off onto the 5K out & back run.  This was a hilly/off-road/tarmacked run course.  I got to one of the marshals at about a quarter of the way on the run & he told me “Graham, you are in the lead”.  Now I never talk while I am racing but I couldn’t resist responding “you are a laugh” & he said “no, it’s true”.  Well.  Let’s get going then, not that I wasn’t trying anyway.  However, my bubble got well & truly busted within 200mtrs of being told the good news when some speedy guy with his racing flats on came flying past me & I had no chance of hanging onto him.  I reached the turnaround point & thought to myself “I’ve got to work out if I can hang on to second place” by seeing who was coming up the hill as I was heading down it.  I had a reasonable gap but by now I was running very scared & worried.  But I eventually made it to the finish line hanging onto second place.  Job done.

My splits are as follows:

Swim – 6:05

T-run – 6:47

Bike – 57:23

Run – 21:06

Total time – 1:31:22

I came 2^nd overall (out of 63) & 1^st in my age group