One of the main reasons I wasn’t completely at ease stems from last year’s experiences in the water. My first ever sprint tri was in a pool with competitors starting every 10 seconds. In my first lap I got punched in the face, dragging my goggles down and cutting my nose. Someone was trying to overtake in my lane and we collided. However, coming from a combat sports background it hit an internal switch that changed me from ‘friendly bloke looking forward to a bike ride’, to ‘oh, its like THAT!’ For my next race at Hever Castle I was way more focussed and had a good warm up. My mate and I entered the lake and the next thing I remember was being dunked, elbowed, pulled and bumped. I very nearly quit. I got myself into a bit of a negative state and the memory has stayed with me for this year’s season.
The thing with the swim, is that there will be contact. You can find a shallow part of the lake and wrestle with the reeds or you can swim among other neoprene clad humans. For this race I accepted my fate and just relaxed into it. I went back to the training mentality and even found myself trying to swim off the hips of other racers and battling for position at the buoys.
Anxiety causes physical tension and clouds your mind and judgement. I was able to happily go about my ride and run with a relaxed mind which made it much easier to relax my body in tri position on the bike and then throughout the run. I can remember hearing some water sloshing around in my stomach on the run, which was good in that I was clearly relaxed, but I probably water loaded a little bit too much.
We must accept our present state and environment at every turn of a race. We must trust in our training and then execute. Tensing up will only burn useful energy and increase the likelihood of injury, not to mention affect good form and performance.
4. PACING
I feel like I paced the race well. Although you are among a field of other triathletes for a great many competitors you are focussing on your own race, your own goals. Sure, use others as targets but only if you feel its not outside of your strategy. And just an aside, don’t look back. It’s negative. Of course check your shoulder on the bike to avoid dangers, but don’t lookback on the run. You should be aiming forward at all times, with maybe a small exception at the final sprint to the finish line.
I watched a good YouTube video from an experienced Iron Man that suggested holding back a little bit on the bike. He literally meant riding at 18mph if you wanted to average 20 mph. Pulling slightly on the reigns will pay dividends and for me, it certainly did. I was passed by about half a dozen bikes during the first 15-20 miles, but then as the course became a little more challenging I increased the intensity and earned back all of those spots. I was doing so well until my chain came off and jammed just before the only significant climb on the course. Dammit!
I also paced the run pretty well too. I noticed that a lot of us were coming out of transition running 7:30 min miles, which I thought would be too quick for me. I don’t have much experience of running half marathons. I ran a 45 minute 10k at a Windsor duathlon and that has been my closest race pace to gauge against. So, I slowed up. I wanted to run around 8 minute miles and I definitely wanted to run inside 2 hours. However, around mile 8 I could feel some of my injuries tormenting me a bit; first my knee, then my ankle and then my hamstring. The last thing I wanted (or needed for my confidence) was a DNF (did not finish), so I slowed up to about 9 minute miles and came home inside the 2 hours. Without pacing I might not have finished and I might have closed out my season with a serious ligament injury.
BAD
1. POOR TRANSITIONS
I think this would appear on a lot of novice triathlete’s lists. The upshot is that I reckon I have an easy couple of minutes to save which would have elevated my final race position. It’s easiest to illustrate in a mini list. OK, so T1:
· I could have swum closer to the exit point of the lake
· For some reason I ran out of transition with one cleat cover over my Speedplay cleats. I have no idea how this happened, but I guess I was in 2 minds when I was setting my kit out as to whether it would be too slippery etc through transition. I only discovered this whilst trying to clip in. Obviously a challenging task when you have a solid plastic barrier!
T2:
· Came to dismount the bike as I did last year when I was racing sprints. For this I would unclip the right shoe, swing it over to the left side as the bike was still moving and then eventually dismount on the left. I was a little more fatigued this time though so realised that wouldn’t happen without embarrassing incident, so I came to a halt (after unclipping) and tried to swing my leg over the rear of the bike. However, I had a newly-mounted X Lab wing on the back which meant a little more effort needed to clear with the leg. A clash with wing ensued but no harm done. More work needed to decide the correct dismount!