Cheshire Triathlon

Firstly, a big thanks to everyone who has sponsored me and my colleagues to do this triathlon. Cardiac Risk in the Young (http://www.c-r-y.org.uk/) will be about £1500 better off thanks to all our efforts today. This will probably save lives, which is great.

The race went pretty much as could be expected. I haven't done any swim training for about 3 years. This became apparent when I had to resort to breast stroke after 4 lengths of ropey front crawl. This didn't seem to slow me down much, and after another 12 lengths I got out of the pool feeling OK.

"No copying my technique now chaps!"

My swim-bike transition was alright as well. I had planned not to have a towel and to take my goggles with me on the bike as I was too lazy to need to walk back to the pool after the event.

My bike ride went well. I passed about 10 people in the 20k and was able to push myself most of the way round. It was gently undulating, so I could keep a decent pace up most of the way. I remembered the advice of changing down gears and pedalling more quickly when I was approaching the bike-run transition. This stops your legs feeling too much like jelly when you try to run straight away.


Sitting down - the fourth discipline

I managed to find my shoes at the transition, and slipped them and my socks on pretty quickly, having talced them well beforehand. I had been considering not wearing socks in order to gain that extra 10 seconds. But then I remembered blistering a few years ago when I'd tried that at a swim-run event.

Once I was out of the transition, I was passing runners for most of the 5k course. In triathlons, most of the good runners can also swim a bit. And because people are set off at times based on their predicted swim time, most of the top runners had already finished by the time I got on to the run course.

The final few paces

Overall I was very happy with my time of 1 hr 11 minutes and 2 seconds. One of the good things about triathlons is that you can spend as much time as you did in the event, working out what the results mean and where you need to improve. It seems pretty clear for me.

Swim
My time: 10:25
Fastest time: 06:31
Percentage of fastest time: 160%

Bike
My time: 40:01
Fastest time: 32:46
Percentage of fastest time: 122%

Run
My time: 20:36
Fastest time: 17:57
Percentage of fastest time: 115%

I clearly need to save more energy from the swim and bike, so I can shave some seconds off my run time :)