After really enjoying
my first triathlon experience, I went home and immediately booked my place on
the Olympic distance Leeds Triathlon. After a day or two, I started to question
the wisdom of this, mainly due to the swim being 1,500m open water in Roundhay
Lake, nearly 4 times the distance of my first tri and without still being able
to front crawl, which would put me at a distinct disadvantage.
In light of this, I decided to switch to the ‘sprint’
distance, which still included a 750m swim in open water, 24km bike and 6.4km
run. This, I reasoned, would be more of a challenge than my first effort and I
could save the Olympic distance for next year after I sort out my swimming over
the winter.
Having picked up my race pack from the HQ at Roundhay Park
on Saturday night, I went straight round to my mum and dad’s for a meal to
celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary which was great but didn’t
give me a huge amount of time to sort everything out so I was slightly stressed
on the morning of the race, especially as I needed to have my bike and kit set
up in the transition area by 7.30am ahead of the pre-race briefing.
With Sarah’s help, I managed to get the bike and all the kit
from the car to the transition area with a bit of time to spare and as the sprint
wave start wasn’t until 8.45am, I had time to apply my number transfers, work
out how to add my race number to my race belt and squeeze into my wetsuit (I
got even more practise at this after needing the loo three times before I
finally got started!)
When the time finally came, I donned my standard issue green
swim cap, zipped up the wetsuit and made my way down to the water’s edge and
into the lake in preparation for the start. The water was on the chilly side
and it was the first time I had worn a wetsuit so it took a bit of getting used
to, but once we got started, I managed to get into a rhythm with my breastroke
and although quite a few front crawlers pulled away, I wasn’t too far behind
when we reached the furthest buoy and turned round for return stretch.
Despite losing a bit of time on the race leaders, I climbed
out of the water in the middle of the field (65th out of 130 it
turned out) and cheered on by Dad, Sarah, Julia, Roy and Rachael, I ran up to
the transition area, peeling off my wetsuit as I went. My first transition was
OK, though it did take a while to get my shoes, socks, race belt and helmet on
plus dry off, de-rack the bike and push to the mount zone. Once I was out of
the mount zone I tried to put the foot down, avoiding the dog walkers on the
patch before getting out on to the open road.
It felt good to have the swim behind me and to be on the
bike so I put the hammer down in an attempt to claw back some of the time lost
in the lake. And it seemed to work as I generated good speed on the long
stretch on the Wetherby road to Collingham passing loads of riders and despite
a few steep inclines on the route back through Keswick, I powered through
Shadwell and back up to Roundhay Park and into the second transition.
I lost a bit of time clomping along in my cycling shoes and
then tying the laces on my trainers (whilst being annoyed with myself for not
having used the tri laces I bought months ago) but was relatively quick out into
the sunshine for two 3.2km laps of the park. The announcer also read my name
out, saying ‘here comes Nick Robinson with his adidas sponsorship’ which was
quite amusing to me and the friends and family who were cheering me on.
I slowly traded my cycling legs for my running ones and with
this being my strongest discipline, attempted to work my way up through the
field which I did with some success in lap 1and in lap 2 I tried to push myself
as hard as possible with the finish line not far away. Re-entering the park for
the last time, I kicked again to try and make up as many places as possible and
improve my overall position, sprinting down the home straight and through the
first set of flags that confusingly wasn’t the finish and through the second
set of flags in an initial time of 1 hour 32 minutes.
It wasn’t until the Monday I got an email with final
results:
Leeds Triathlon
time: 01:30:46
Swim 00:17:57
T1 00:02:11
Cycle 00:47:11
T2 00:01:05
Run 00:23:55
That meant 10th place overall which was
fantastic, considering I lost an average of 5-6 mins on swim, giving me
motivation to learn front crawl and progress to Olympic distance next year. I
was also really pleased to have recorded the 7th fastest cycle (I
was 6th fastest in the run) both of which have made me think about
potentially working towards a half ironman next year with the goal of
completing my first Iron Man in 2014 – now that sounds like a plan!!!