At last the eagerly awaited news of the tryathlon.
We arrived at the start nice and early to prepare our baskets and to dfamiliarise ourselves with the layout. Most of us had done at least some training together and there was a good spirit in the air. Most of us were a little nervous about the exertion that lay in store. I was a bit worried that I would not be able to complete the event, because my training was only as much as each of the individual parts and I had not attempted to do the swim, bike and run together.
To cut to the chase, there were about 40 of us taking part. Photos are not brilliant because our camera picture button has broken off and it is quite difficult to take pictures. I went into the pool in the 9th wave of 4 swimmers. I came out last. Most of the swimmers who were serious were using crawl, and I cannot do 9 lengths of crawl so I stuck mostly to breast stroke and one length of back stroke to preserve my legs.
The transition to bike was slow - about 4 minutes. I think if I was serious about getting a good time, I would change by the bike and perhaps not bother drying my toes!
I liked the 9km bike ride, because it was the bit I was most confident about. I flew round and caught up quite a few places. The last km was downhill and so we all went for that bit.
Transition to run was fast, I scoffed an energy gel and got out on the road. Running with a bunch of other blokes was a revelation. All my training has been done on my own, and it was much easier to keep going whilst trotting alongside a few other blokes.
I stuck with doing the short course 300m swim, 9km bike and 3km run. My time was 1 hour and 27 seconds. There were no placings because it was designed as a participation event and not a race. I guess there is merit in that, but as lots of the blokes said, we are men, so we compete! If I do it again next year I will definitely get training earlier and go for the long course.
