Realised when I got in the water that i've done very little swimming in the last 7 weeks. I knew this was going to be hard work, but I just took it gently and kept going all the way round.

Not let the training drop off to the extent that it has.

I was very tired coming out of the swim, so I just took it really slowly in transition. I did the changes pretty fast, but gave myself some time to take on some food and catch my breath.

Nothing. T1 was slow, but that was a conscious decision.

I found the cycle hard work, but kept pushing the pace all the way through. I really enjoyed the challenge of the technical course, but there were certain sections where there were dead turns and we turned straight into a head wind. The frustrating part was that it never felt like you got the benefit of the wind behind, but had the feeling of cycling into a wind tunnel in the other direction!

Again, more training. Really noticed the benefit from the cornering session we did a couple of weeks ago. More practice would have been good for this course.

We had a bad position in transition, off to one side. I got stuck trying to get round someone who was clearing transition from the sprint, which was annoying, but doesn't appear to have slowed me down too much.

Nothing. Please with this part.

I was feeling very tired after the bike, and Kevin came into transition just after me. I suggested that we ran together, but it landed up being much slower than I'd intended with a lot of walking because he'd hurt his knee. I stuck with him because I could tell he was finding it really hard to keep going.

I also suffered from "GI distress" and had to run into to portaloos at the end of the first lap. Not ideal, but made for a much more comfortable 2nd lap.

Run at my own pace rather than with Kevin.

Mostly getting jumped on by my dog. My parents came to watch and brought Barney with them. He'd managed to go for a swim in the river at some point, and decided to share the damp with all of us :-)


Lack of fitness/recent training. I wasn't even sure I was going to be able to finish, so I was really pleased with it in the end.


This is a really well organised race. I did the mini-triathlon last year and it was the one that really got me hooked. It's great that they have all the different distances because loads of people from our club took part in the various events and it was a good day out.