June 17, 2012

Nuffield Health Challenge - Dorney lake

I don’t remember when Ellen and I decided to enter this race, but it was pretty late and totally unplanned. Maybe a week or less before it took place. After the poor weather we have had, we were pretty excited to get racing again, first race of the year for Ellen, and at Eton! Olympic distance for both of us…

The weather on the day was absolutely fantastic, and when we arrived (roughly around 10am for 12 and 12:30 starts), the wind was still quite low. It however picked up a lot later and made the bike leg all more interesting.

Also, because of the Olympics and the building of the stands to watch the rowing races over the road in between the two lakes, the bike course was going around the perimeter of the park, thus making the bike distance 42.5Km.

After The freezing Swashbuckler, this one was going to be a real scorcher.

I started the swim mid-pack and had a relatively slow first lap, but managed to sight properly and not get lost (yes it did happen to me “all these years ago” at this very same place) around the buoys. After California I am determined to pass them right ON them, rather than 50m away so I’d swim as close to the race distance as possible. Kin dof what you’d expect really, but not being the best swimmer out there, it can still be intimidating to get close and personal with others right on a buoy! The second lap felt much better and much more powerful which was rewarded by a 26'24" time. My best to date, so I’m quite pleased with that!

T1 was uneventful, having prepared everything properly and my bike being as usual all alone as I came out of the water. I was soon on the bike, with a tailwind to get me started down the lake, which was very nice… Until reaching the end of the lake and the turnaround point. There is no respite in Eton. Ever. It is ALWAYS windy! This day it picked up quite a bit though and I am not sure I had as such windy ride there in my previous races. I did push hard though and passed loads of other cyclists, including my “rack neighbour” number 649 who said he’d swim 21m and whom I told I’d catchup on the bike.

Cutting through the wind was tough, but I managed a great 1h06'12" for 42.5K which is 38.5Kph average.

T2 came short of a catastrophy when I slid on someone’s wetsuit laying across the way. I hope I didn’t damage it too much, but it really shouldn’t have been all over the place. 58" to run across the whole transition with the bike and get out on the run was great though!

I started the run feeling great and at a normal pace for my 10K Olympic tri runs, but after about 2K, right before the end of the first lap, my stomach started to feel really dodgy and I had to slow down and eventually walk around the water station. I settled into a slower pace for the second lap, but I was feeling really bad by then and I stopped some time at the water station and walked away slowly before starting to run again. Ellen was by then on the run course as well and cheering me on while number 649 was clearely making progress to catch me up! I managed to plod lap 3 at around 5min/K and after another quick water stop I hauled all my will and picked it up to finish a bit better.

That was my worst ever 10K in 4 years of triathlons. 49 minutes… There are two things I can think of to explain what happened:

I pushed too hard on the bike
I drank too much.

I think I drank too much, because it’s my stomach who was sending clear signals that it didn’t like the load of 2 bottles of isostar I drank on the bike. I used to drink only 1 on this kind of distance, and the heat probably pushed me to drink too much. My muscles were fine all the way around, so I really think I was a stomach too full of sugary drink. I never really thought about over-hydration, but that’s a good lesson learnt…

Never the less, I finished in 2h24'02" which is my second ever fastest Olympic, by only 3 minutes, so considering the bike was 2.5K longer than a real Olympic, I was on par with my PB, even with this shocking run!

Ellen finished her race in a blitzing 3h06', including a 50min run for her first run back after rehab from her small stress fracture. She also smashed her previous bike time by 22' (yes, 22 MINUTES!), so her work on the turbo ober the last months is really paying off! Well done you!