Portobello Sprint Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

The swim was bad, bad, bad.
Complete melee at the start. I ended up bugging out and started taking a bit of a wide line to try and avoid the wrestling match. To the first buoy I still had someone swimming on my legs all the way. I think we were swimming against the tide as the first turn took so long to arrive. Main thought at this point was OMG I'm swimming more than double this next week. Headed for the next buoy, although I was just following the crowd as I couldn't see it at all. Eventually did a couple of breast strokes to spot it as I couldn't believe I wasn't there yet, it was still a fair way off. I now had some guy on my LHS who was keeping pace with me but every 10 yards he would suddenly slew right and crash into me. I breathe left and could see the crash coming every time but could do nothing about it.

Round the last bouy, nearly home. I swear the tide has changed, there is no way this is swimming with the tide. As I slowly approach the shore my hand hits something solid, I'm telling you it felt like a brick (the house variety). I came to a complete stop with that age old question running through my head - WTF was that.
Eventually make the shore but it feels like I've been swimming for half an hour.

The swim was bad, bad, bad but in that strange tri way that was good. It was a test, it was hard. To be honest I wouldn't do anything different.

T1 always feels like an eternity.
I went for putting the shoes on at transition rather than on the bike and inevitably found my station was as far away from the mount line as possible. Did a fantastic 50 yard cat-walk model clip-clop.
T1 time is included in the bike time.

Work out how to put my shoes on while cycling.

I went for quite a steady first lap. Came into the dodgy hairpin turn behind a guy who took it unbelievably cautiously. We both got stopped by a pedestrian crossing shortly after. 2nd lap was good, early on 3 women passed me in quick succession for a bit of a wake up call. Used my superior mass to pull them back a bit on the downhill. 3rd lap was good as well, the fast guys from the 2nd wave were now passing me at astounding pace but there were plenty of bodies to race against. Went for it a bit too fast at the dodgy hairpin and my bike went into a skid. I came to a virtual stop half way across the road going in the wrong direction.
Happy to do the bike in sub 40.

Nothing

Fionna aparently has some video of this transition so maybe I shouldn't rate it until I've seen this footage. All seemed good to me though.
T2 time is included in the run time.

Nothing

Tried to take it quite easy out to the turn point. My feet felt like blocks of ice, scratch that, I couldn't feel my feet.
Shortly after the turn point I saw Doug, a vintage guy from the Stirling tri club. I knew he would be catching me shortly. I tried to up the pace a bit and pick out targets to aim for. Said hi to Doug as he ran past me and tried to keep in touch with him. Felt pretty strong at the end and managed to run a few people down. Good run.

Nothing

As usual no warm down.
Headed up to the meadows for Fringe Sunday, loads of shows on to lie about and watch.


The tide.


My swim time in last years race was 12:23 over 5 mins faster than this year. As an example of how hard the swim was this year the fastest person in my heat did it in 13:15. Taking this into consideration I'm very happy to do an overall time that is only 2mins slower than last year.