Race Review - Peterhead Sprint Triathlon

Pre-race I was in a state. There were a few people there that I didn't want to see, and very few of the ones that I would normally hide amongst to try and deal with it. I worked around it by sitting in the car for about 45 minutes between registering and the briefing, then setting up my transition after almost everyone else was already in the pool. Then I got changed and headed out onto pool side, found a quiet space and tried to calm my heart rate and decrease some of the twitching. Today was as close as I have been to a serious panic attack for a while. Maybe karma isn't quite as effective as it seems.

There were only two heats. The first one had all of the novice race and some of the slowest racers from the sprint race. By the time I was at poolside the novices were starting to finish.

With what would normally have been a whole fast heat worth of swimmers crammed into two lanes meant there was a huge range of abilities. That then led to a lot of overtaking. Garmin suggests that I had 9 stops to let people pass at about 4-5 seconds each. And I was never able to get on to one of them to get a beneficial tow to make up for it. Also the pool at Peterhead is also a funny shape, wider than it is long, and quite shallow. So even with 6 lanes there still isn't a lot of surface wake, but there are a lot of funny currents going on underneath. This makes for quite a bit of directional control that isn't normal for pool swims.

The watch says I was out of the water in 12mins 28. That would have been a huge swim PB, so with all the stops I was really surprised. But then less surprised when I downloaded from Garmin to find that I had been tapped too early. I only did 28 laps, or 700m, instead of the 30 laps / 750m that I should have done. With all the stops against 2 laps short the time probably isn't too far from what I am capable of.

Through T1 I was fairly conservative. I took it easy and just went through everything carefully to try and avoid some of the messes I have made this year. It wasn't fast, but it was calm and efficient.

I had a really good mount onto the bike and got up to pace and into my TT position really early on. 

On the first roundabout out of town the sign had been twisted round by the wind. It looked like a straight arrow, so I went straight on. Then I had a look back at the signs on the other side of the roundabout and wasn't confident that was the way the route went. I should have recced the bike route, or at least looked more closely at the map. Instead I pulled over and had a quick look back to check if the next cyclist came straight over. He did, but he was so close behind me that I wondered if he had just followed me across a wrong turn. he shouted "straight on, definitely" as he passed, so I got straight back on the pace.

I was catching some people on the bike. And I was spending a lot of time in my TT position. Peterhead is a very flat course. There was a fairly gusty crosswind but I was managing to handle it well enough. Just before half way the route turn through the village of Longside. I was even managing to time trial straight through the village and up the rise out of town. From there back to Peterhead is a busier road and some of the traffic was a bit risky. But I was managing to still keep the pace on, and I got very lucky with the traffic across all three roundabouts coming back into town and didn't have to ease up at all.

Averaging over 20mph on the bike despite the crosswinds was really great. It is my fastest average speed on the bike apart from the straight time trial that I did.

T2 was as slick as I have ever done. And as it turns out I was fastest of anyone. 20 seconds in and out.

And onto the run I felt fairly good. My legs were moving ok. Still not running like I used to but it was as fast a shuffle as I have managed this year. I was under 7min/mile pace steadily. The route goes straight out and back so approaching the turn you get a chance to see the athletes in front. I knew I wasn't going to catch anyone in front but there were a couple of people close behind me that looked to be running well so I had to push again on the downhill coming back in. 

On the way back down the hill I passed a lot of people I know. There are massive spikes in my heart rate track at the points where I passed the people I didn't want to see. Jumping over 210bpm from the 165 it was doing during the rest of the run. That doesn't seem to have affected my pace though, I was still running well enough and coming in to the finish I managed to muster up a bit of a sprint, even without checking behind to see if anyone was gaining. 

If I  factor the amount of overtaking against the 2 laps short I was probably on to set another swim PB. At some point I may try and sneak in a 750m swim time trial before the end of the year, just to see what I can actually do flat out with the turns in. The bike was as fast as I have ridden in a triathlon yet. The run was as good as I can expect for what I have done this year. So a pretty good race all in. 

Here are the full results. Fourth Senior, seventh overall. That is a pretty good finish to the season.