I had been looking forward to this race for a long time.  In fact it is such a long time ago as we were in Kitzbuhel when I entered it!!!

We drove up on the Saturday morning because registration & bike racking was mandatory for Saturday.  I racked the back & was told that we weren’t allowed to protect it overnight because of the wind conditions so I had to leave my pride & joy out all night in the elements – it wasn’t very happy.  We then reccied the swim start & swim exit because due to the Magna Carter event that was being held in Windsor, the transition entrances & exits had been changed to accommodate for some road closures, making it over 1K of transition running, so after doing the swim reccie we walked the bike out which seemed to go on for ages.  We then headed back to the car park & I did my usual pre-race 20min bike, 10min run before heading off to drive the bike course just to refresh myself.  We then headed off to find the hotel.

We had an early morning wake up call of 4am.  Although my swim wave wasn’t due to start until 7:05 (Wave 15 out 25) I just wanted to get there early-ish because it was a long walk from the car park to race transition & then after setting up transition, there was then a long walk to the swim start, so even before the start of the triathlon I had walked about 5K already.  They had also changed the direction of the swim this year & said that the swim was with the current for most of the way, but at 7:05 when I started, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t feel any extra movement of the current taking me downstream.  The only problem with the swim was some idiot decided he wanted the exact same bit of water as me so I fell back a bit & went round the inside of him & then just carried on down to the turn-around point leaving him in my wake.  By this time I was catching up the previous wave & it was getting a little bit crowded towards the swim exit.  As I was now swimming against the current it didn’t seem that difficult (maybe I’m such a strong swimmer now!!!).

I exited the swim for a monster run towards T1 & managed to find the bike without any problems in such a large transition area.  I then headed out onto the bike course with yet another monster long run to get to the mount line.  Once I was on the bike I settled in quite quickly but after a few minutes it started to spit with rain so I just had to treat some of the bends with a bit of caution.  The good thing about Windsor bike course is that you are constantly overtaking people which are always a good incentive.

I did wonder why, when nearing the end of the bike course, my back & quads were starting to ache a little bit more than normal (maybe because I was going so fast!!!), but then thinking about it I had not moved out of my aero-tuck position since I started the bike ride.

I hit the mount line with precise accuracy with a shout of encouragement from Coach 2, which is always a good thing.

But then had yet another long run through transition to get the run shoes on.  They had slightly tweaked the run course as well by lengthening the first out & back run & not taking us out over the bridge into the town as in previous years.  It was still a three lap run course & still included the climb up past the castle.  Personally I thought that I was running reasonably well, not super fast up the hill, but was making up for it when coming down the hill, & the same as the bike, you were constantly overtaking people.  A few people did overtake me but were they finishing their three laps, or just starting the first lap.  With so many people, it did get a bit confusing.  I enjoyed the run in a sadistic painful way & managed to cross the line to finish the 25th Anniversary of the Windsor Triathlon & got a nice bit of bling for my trouble.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My splits are as follows:

Swim – 24:26

T1 – 4:16

Bike – 1:06:01

T2 – 1:54

Run – 44:34

Total time 2:21:13

Position Overall 65/1817.

Position Male 53/1459

Position Male 5-54 4/166

Conclusion:  I’m glad that I have finally managed to tick this one off my bucket list but while I was in transition, Coach 2 decided to go & get my results & when she came back & showed me the ticket my initial thoughts were “you’ve got to be ******* kidding me” regarding the run.  Myself & Coach 2 thought that I was running quite well & that my training had been going well too, so when I saw the results a I felt a little bit peeved (to put it politely) about it

Gra