Races booked for 2011

Haven't actually booked any races yet (though will be booking one today), but here's the planned list:

17th April - Duston Sprint

8th May - Grendon Sprint

14th Aug - Cambridge Olympic

25th Sept - Roade Sprint

Events entered:

Cartmel Challenge 18K Trail race tomorrow 02/04/11

IM Wales 11th September

Others yet to be paid for are:

Horwich Triathlon - 01/05/11

Coniston Standard - 04/06/11

LLandudno sea swim  - 18/06/11

A Day in the Lakes - 26/06/11

Morcambe bay swim 28/08/11

Hopefully i'll squeeze one or to others in there and will probably finish off with the Mersey Marathon in October. Bang tidy.

I raced Cambridge in 2009, its a great event. Brilliant lake for the swim, clear to the bottom and lots of carp to race, then a very flat but windy bike and a flat but dusty run through the farm tracks. Transition is a bit cramped so get there early to pick your spot.

Tony, I may see you at Hever Castle then.

Pash

This minus the Paris marathon, the London tri and the Alpe D'Huez tri as the registration for both was already closed by the time that I tried to enter.   

Great, thats 3 of us for the Hever Castle event then. I am only doing the sprint as my work colleague wants a race!! He might see me at the start for 10 seconds and then when he finally finishes waaaaayyyyy behind me. I am being cruel he is a total newbie

You know him already ?

He is a fast 5k runner so will have to give myself a lead from the swim and bike.

Mjsark,

The swim is always going to be the tricky bit if your background is run/bike. If you follow Tonys advice it wont matter how far the swim is you will be fine.

It is worth having a couple of lessons with a coach to sort out your stroke and then get practising as much as you can. Once you can swim 750m non stop you will find it is no problem to swim 1500m because you will be relaxed in your swimming and your fitness will allow you to swim steady pace for as long as you want particularly with the buoyancy you get from a wetsuit.

Good luck

Hello,

Thanks for your input.  Just after I posted this I went back and saw it was 1500m swim, which was definetly daunting!!  For some reason I thought it was 750m.  But after reading your posts, I did sort of see the light, if you ask me to extend a cycle / run then I would be reasonably confident to get the distance done because I would relax and get on with it!!

Like you say half the battle is getting to a comfortable state with the swimming too......  I have found that the haywards heath triathlon club do a run / coached swim session weekly, so I think I will try to meet up and join the club.  The pool they use is only just down the road.

From reading the swimming material on this site, I can see that I kick to much to try to stay straighter in the water, but thats mainly as my head is upright and all over the place!!  So I will mainly do some drills to try to get over this.

You certainly made it sound simpler and less daunting.  I dont mind the hard work, but swimming has always been just thrashing about in the water and trying to work harder to go faster.

Thanks for your help.  I will contact the tri club and get some local help too!!