Well that was a fairly epic affair – never even been to a tri event as a spectator before, let alone competitor so it was really interesting to see the whole thing from start to finish. This time, as mentioned, I was part of a team of work colleagues but there were also two others that we knew who were doing the full event.
The vast majority of competitors do the whole thing and there were only 18 relay teams entered, so the teams get set off in the first wave along with the youngest male age category, meaning our team swimmer (Dave) was off at 06:30, straight into the sunrise.
I watched Dave set off then went for last minute preparations (read ‘last nervous loo stop’) then headed for transition to my bike to wait for him - he did a cracking time (33:27) so he was there quickly, grey faced and dry heaving from having sprinted up from the lake shore then I was quickly on my way.
It’s a two lap course and starts with a gentle climb up to the main road to Oakham. And then sadly into quite a stiff headwind. The road is quite undulating but is fairly exposed making for some hard work. I think if I was just riding for myself I would have ridden fairly hard but having seen just how much effort Dave had clearly put in, it did motivate me to really keep the pressure on. The Rutland Ripple (a set of three short climbs) came on fairly quickly, although it came after a few undulations that fooled me into thinking that it had been heavily oversold. While none of the uphill bits were very long or excessively steep, they were steep enough, especially with the wind.
But after the climbs, came a turn to the east, on fairly decent roads, with a tailwind and mostly downhill for quite a way, in fact, pretty much until the turn back north at Tinwell. So I was battering along on that as fast as I could – my average was 17.4mph when I got to the start of the downhill leg and 20.6 mph when I turned off it and back in to more mixed terrain. I didn’t see if I set off any of the frowny faces Mike mentioned.
One advantage about all of the stats obsessing is that it does help pass the time and keep you focussed. I virtually never leave the average speed indicator up, as in busy London traffic it’s far too distracting, this time I was obsessing over it and trying to either retain the higher average for longer or get just that one more 0.1mph added to it.
Then the ride turned back west and back on to the undulating main road and a final climb before dropping back down to the start/feed area to start the second lap – I heard shouts of encouragement from the rest of the team and supporters but couldn’t spot any faces as I sped past.
The second lap was harder – partly because the wind had got up a bit more I think but more because it was just the general accumulating distance. Interestingly I noticed the road surface a lot more the second time around, finding bumps where there had been none previously. I felt I was having to work a lot harder, overall my lap time was four minutes longer the second time around (1:22 compared to 1:18). Time did seem to speed by though and it wasn’t too long before I was back on the lovely downhill leg.
Disaster almost struck at Ketton as a car pulled straight off at grass verge when I was approaching it at about 30+mph. I had to brake very hard to avoid a collision, so hard my back wheel locked out and fishtailed alarmingly. I actually thought I was going to flip the bike – on inspecting the tyre later, I flat spotted it due to the braking (it was fairly worn and due for replacement shortly but it was almost a brown bibshort moment). We had been warned, very, very strongly that abuse and/or profanity at locals and other road users was an instant disqualification offence, so I limited myself to a “that was very frightening” comment. I did check the penalties board later to make sure I hadn’t been disqualified!
Despite that I managed a reasonable pace and was still just on time for the 2 hours and 45 minutes I was aiming for as long as I kept pushing. In fact, the finish came up quicker than I was expecting and I came in at 2hrs, 40 minutes and 44 seconds which if the distance is correct would be about a 19.7mph average (I think either the distance is shorter than advertised or my bike computer was not recording 100% as it had my average at 19.1 mph). I was quickly back into the transition area and handed the transponder on to Sophie, our team runner for the final leg and was then free to spectate, recover and drink free beer. Sadly this was alcohol free beer, the words’ alcohol’ and ‘free’ being in the wrong order.
Sophie ran a really great leg, putting in her PB for a half marathon distance by some minutes, finishing in 1:44:08 (she was third in her age category for the run), which gave us a final time of five hours and fourteen seconds. It was a little bit frustrating to not sneak under the five hours but overall we were all really happy with our times and it was the best time our work relay team has put in before (the previous best was more than three minutes slower). When doing a comparison against the two people who were there with us we were 00:26:47 and 01:11:29 quicker. Those are the times without transitions as it isn’t a fair comparison to compare the time of a relay with that of a single individual due to the lengthier changeovers an individual requires to switch from swim to bike to run. Of course, it isn’t a fair comparison at all, as the relay team members can give their leg everything whereas the individuals have to pace themselves for the whole event and I’ve got great respect for those who do the whole thing.
In retrospect, now that I know the course I think I could do a better time – I reckon on saving a minute or so per lap due to course knowledge in future, I reckon on up to three minutes a lap if the headwind is less fierce and anything between five to ten minutes a lap if I was lighter. So all in all, it would be quite possible to get round in 2 hrs 25 minutes or less, which would have gained us at least five places on the team leaderboard – it would also have put us in 87th place overall out of the 1,000* entrants rather than the 167th we finished in, although we were very pleased with that. As it was we were ninth out of eighteen teams and all in the top 33% for our disciplines (apart from Dave who was just outside the top 10% for the swim).
All in all a great weekend but I still have a permanent huger at the moment, don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard on a bike before.
Thanks again for the advice and route description Mike, I was glad to avoid the horse trials. Also Kim was definitely right, this was a great way to approach triathlon.
Cheers all!
*Looking at the results, only just under 800 actually started though (785 starters, 8 disqualifications, 33 DNF)