Yesterday I completed the London Triathlon for the second time.
I had hoped I might be able to better my time from 2010 and dip under 4 hours but always knew it would be a tough challenge bearing in mind how poor my running performances have been this year. Indeed, I did miss that time, finishing this year in 4:11:22 (2010: 4:02:39). Most of the extra time this year was, surprisingly, lost on the swim whereas my bike was 1 second behind last year and most surprising of all, my run was a tiny bit better than last year. I come away very satisfied at having finished again, and took a lot of solace from the similarity in bike and run times to last year.
The weekend began as last year with a drive down to London on the Friday. We (my daughter and I) stayed in the same hotel as last year but this year’s experience was not as positive. If we go for the 2012 race we will be looking for a different place to stay.
Saturday morning we decided to go and watch the celeb wave set off and managed to get a really good spot to watch them come out of the water and the run to T1. We were interested to see how Queen of the Jungle Stacey Solomon would get on as we’d been following her tweets and appreciated how nervous she was. She didn’t look particularly confident especially when a few people barged past her but fair play to her, she put in a creditable time for her swim. She also looked mightily relieved and happy to have completed her challenge. One person who did look as if she was up for the race and enjoying her experience was former Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm who, as it turned out, won her category coming first of 22 women in the Sprint Female section of her wave. I watched her cross the finish line and she went flying past; definitely had some good speed in her legs. She tweeted afterwards that she wants to improve her transition times and that is the mark of someone who has been bitten by the triathlon bug!
The rest of Saturday was spent watching the racing, visiting the Expo, racking my bike and generally chilling out before my race the next day.
Sunday morning dawned, and we could see from the hotel room window some of the early waves in the river and the first wave of runners, and it made me realise that for the people organising and working on the event, they were in for a very long day, the first wave having gone off at 6:30am. After a hearty, late-ish breakfast (didn’t want to need to eat again before the race) we went to the ExCel, first priority to complete the setting up of transition. (Note to self: Garmin Forerunners do NOT like being inside the ExCel centre so don’t bother with it next year). After that task was done we had time to watch the elite men and women finish and the medal presentation ceremonies. There are some people who love to splash the crowd with champers! Nice smell to take into the Thames though.
When the time came to race the first priority was to make sure my wetsuit was properly zipped up to avoid the hassle I had last week at HP. My daughter is now very experienced at this and she did a fine job of making sure the zip was done up properly. There were no repetitions of last week’s wetsuit issues.
This year, because there were 404 in my wave they decided to split the wave into two starts going off two minutes apart – I opted for the second start to avoid being swum over by the faster swimmers. I thought the swim had gone reasonably well for the first half, despite getting a few gob-fulls of salty Thames water right at the beginning. I even managed to catch and over-take a fellow competitor before we’d reached the City Airport bridge. As I turned and started heading toward the other bridge I noticed that the water got colder as I went past the shadow of the ExCel centre. This is where it began to get a bit hairy as I was caught and swum over by half of the following wave – there was no etiquette with those guys and they just barged past. I found this disrupted my rhythm a bit but it is all part of the game. As I got to the penultimate turning buoy I noticed that my watch hadn’t started properly so I could only estimate my time from the start time of 13:42. As I got out the water I noticed the time was 14:38 which meant my swim had taken 56 minutes, 8 minutes slower than last year! My official time was 56:22 (2010: 48:18). Even now, 24 hours later I can’t work out why this year’s swim was so much slower than last as my training times have certainly improved over the year. All I can speculate is maybe the disruption caused by the next wave, maybe there was a stronger tidal current this year, maybe I’ve built my endurance at the expense of speed. I can’t put my finger on any particular reason for this.
The first transition seemed to go reasonably well: there is a bit of a run from the swim exit into transition, and we have to remove our wetsuits before we go into T1. I was a tad slower than last year because I had the additional task of putting on my charity t-shirt: this year I was raising money for Children on the Edge. Feel free to click this link to help build my total 🙂
Out onto the bike and this year I started off feeling stronger and was out of the saddle for the first big climb at Leamouth. The Limehouse Link tunnel was again awesome for speed, but a real leg burner climbing out of it. On the first lap I noticed that the second turnaround was a roundabout earlier than Beckton, which means they shortened the course a little bit. Notwithstanding this my individual lap times were spookily similar to last year at 43:38 (2010: 43:19) and 45:38 (2010: 45:55), giving a total bike split of 1:29:16 (2010: 1:29:14). Ok, the route was slightly shorter but even so, these times are pretty consistent. One thing I did find this year though was that my legs did feel a bit more tired on the second lap from what I remember of last year, so I was not expecting anything miraculous on the run.
T2 was unremarkable and again a scarily consistent time with last year 3:45 (2010: 3:42).
Out on to the run and this was the first time I really noticed how warm and uncomfortable it was yesterday. I had hoped to start the run with a bit of a spurt to try and get the lgs quickly into a good running rhythm but that plan soon fell apart as after only about 500m or so as my left quad started to cramp up. The first lap was a real challenge because of this and at one point I was concerned I may have to walk the final 8k. I completed the first lap in 23:48. I noticed on this lap that the turn around point was a few meters earlier than last year but I think this was made up by a slightly wider course just outside the ExCel building. On the second lap I eased up slightly and the cramp eased a bit, completing it in 24:26.
The Children on the Edge t-shirt had my name on it and the effect on the crowd was unbelievable. Because they could read my name there were so many cheers and shouts calling out my name that it was very inspiring. When the crowd calls out your name you know they are shouting for you and it does make you want to try harder. I found the third lap was my best of the lot: the cramp had gone, the crowd’s shouts pushed me on and I completed it in 23:03. For the fourth lap the cramp was back but I’d already decided I would take the time to thank everyone who had supported me on the previous laps and I completed it in 24:27, giving a total run time of 1:35:43 (2010: 1:35:56). That is the most staggering thing of all – that I slightly bettered my run time from 2010. Everything this year had indicated I would struggle to get anywhere near it and, ok it’s only 13 seconds, but to improve on last year, especially with the cramp in laps 1 and 4, is a result I’ll take quite happily.
Whilst on the run, I did wonder if one thing I was lacking was racing sharpness. This was only my third race of the year and no matter how well training goes, I do feel that there is no substitute for racing to sharpen up performances. This is a contrast to how I was feeling at Blenheim when I had my mental freak-out and was ready to give up racing for a while, but I did feel yesterday that had I raced more this year I would have had more sharpness, especially for the start of the run.
I’m already contemplating putting an entry in for the 2012 race, which next year will be on the 22nd and 23rd September, as I would quite like London to be my one and only standard distance race each year.
Thank you for reading this blog.
The Only Limit Is Your Ability to Imagine 