Ripon Triathlon - July 2008
What a great race! Things went surprisingly well, and with my entry being such a last minute thing (for me) it all worked out very well. I entered this race on the back of my disappointment last weekend when I missed out on competing at Wakefield because I was ill. I looked around on the net to see if there was anything with which I could replace it and make myself feel a little better. I was really lucky to find this race, it was the following weekend (where we did actually have some free time), it was in Ripon which is less than an hour away and it had still had places and was still accepting entries online, but only that day! I was quite nervous coming into the race for a number of reasons, not least simply because I hadn't done it before. Also: it was my first attempt at an olympic distance this year; I didn't know how fit I was after missing a week's training due to being ill; it was an afternoon start and I wasn't sure about getting my nutrition right as I'm used to early morning starts for things of this length and I just didn't really know much about the race although I'd been told that it was a good one.
The bad thing about the race from Daniel's point of view was the amount of waiting around there was beforehand. We had to be there before 12 so that I could register and not risk losing my place, which was obviously a very important point, but the race wasn't scheduled to begin until 2pm. In the end we arrived at Ripon Race Course at about quarter past eleven, so in plenty of time, this is always better for my stress levels as I always feel much better once I'm there and know that nothing can go wrong with finding the place or getting registered on time. In the end we were lucky to have got there so smoothly as there was a big crash on the A1 and a lot of people got stuck in the ensuing jam, to the point that the start of the race was postponed by half an hour to give more people a chance to get there. This was fair, but didn't make things better for Daniel's waiting around issues. The kids were pretty much happy, they had snacks to eat, juice to drink and spent a lot of time playing with somebody else's football. A nice touch to the day was the inclusion of a free to enter kids' dash race about an hour before the start of the triathlon itself. The kids ran about 1K around the outside of the main area before coming through the finish line and being awarded a medal - a nice medal too, with good weight to it and the race name engraved on the back. Both kids took part and really seemed to enjoy doing it and, of course, getting their medal when they'd finished.
The race was organised to go off in two waves, with the faster swimmers being in the first wave and those with slower predicted swim times being in the second wave. I was down for the second wave. I was a bit worried about the start as there were an awful lot of people starting at the same time, it was busier in the water than anything I've done before and it was a mixed start of men and women together. I needn't have worried. A nice bloke gave me a hand getting into the water, then apologised for touching me! Sad thing when someone can't be kind without worrying that you'll bite their head off, I made sure I thanked him. We were in the water for nearly ten minutes before we started off so there was plenty of time to get acclimatised, always a good idea. The swim was right around the two islands in the lake, so we really were looking at 1500m in an out and back straight line, it always looks an awful long way when you see it like that. There were a couple of buoys to help with sighting and an orange arch to aim for on the way back, sighting turned out to be pretty easy. There was weed in the water but it wasn't too bad at all. It was a bit of a scrum, it was impossible not to bump and be bumped because there were so many people there, but nobody was doing it on purpose and things were pretty friendly. I was really pleased to find that I wasn't bothered by having so many people around me, a few years ago it would have totally freaked me out. I was very careful to keep my face away from other swimmers as I'm always very concerned about losing my goggles - not a good idea when you wear contact lenses. However, they stayed where they belonged and I felt fine in myself. Things bunched up again around the turn point at the far island, some people walked around it on the mud up near the island, I deliberately stayed a little further out so I could keep swimming. Obviously it got very muddy at that point with the ground being churned up by the walkers, but that didn't bother me this time either. I had to pause on the way back to let water out of my goggles and a nice guy coming up behind me asked if I was okay, I sorted it out and swam on. I enjoyed the swim, was very pleased that things that would previously have upset me didn't, and managed a PB for the dstance! I did the 1500m in 28:25, a full 1:26 faster than my previouys PB! I'm well chuffed with that and my run of swimming PBs continues - woohoo!
My transition went better than my last open water one in that I managed to get out of my wetsuit without any fuss. I'm never exactly fast in transition but I was calm and collected and just got on with it, so that'll do me nicely. The timing chip mats were beeping encouragingly so I knew my time was being recorded and I was in and out of transition in 1:40. Not too bad. It was quite a long run to the mount line but I felt able to run okay, except for worrying that my jelly beans might jump out of my back pocket before I got onto my bike! Thankfully they didn't.
The cycle route was well marshalled and well covered by motorycle referees. It was also very, very windy out there. I felt able to ride okay, lots of people were coming past me because I'd swum faster than them but clearly they could cycle faster than me. I just concentrated on doing my best. I did find it hard because of the wind, especially on the very open bits of road in between the A1 and the airfield, practically getting blown away. I didn't use my tri bars as much as I perhaps should have done because of the wind. On the way back I was starting to think that I must be being really slow because I couldn't work out how near to the race course I was, then suddenly it was right in front of me and my time wasn't too bad after all. I completed the 40K in 1:33:52. That's not a fabulous time by any means but I was quite happy with it. An okay time for me and the battle with the wind certainly slowed me down a bit.
My second transition went pretty well too. I had to push somebody else's bike along because they'd racked it in my place, but otherwise things went fine. I was out again in 1:14.
The run worried me a little as I haven't actually run as far as 10K recently! Also my strides felt a bit tight and small as I set out. I concentrated on keepng going, getting a rhythm and finding my legs and then tried to relax a bit and find some flow. I definitely thought it was going to take me forever when I reached the 1K marker sign, it seemed like the longest kilometre ever. However, when I reached the 5K turnaround point things weren't loking so bad after all, I knew if I kept calm and kept at it I could post a semi-decent time. Ideally I wanted to get in under an hour for the run as I don't always manage that in a straight 10K, so to manage it after all that would be to do very well. I ran quite a bit of the course step for step with another competitor but managed to break away from him in the final kilometre and came down the finish chute on my own. April and Ryan had pom-poms and were cheering me through - excellent. And my time? 59:28 for the 10K, I was over the moon with that.
My overall time for the race was 3:04:43, my second best ever time for an olympic distance race. I am really, really pleased with that. This is especially the case because my best time is from Salford which is a very fast course. I proved something to myself today and really enjoyed doing it. I'd certainly recommend this race to anyone else and I'd be very happy to do it again myself. Well organised, handy for us and very enjoyable to do. I had a brilliant day.
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