My First Standard Distance Triathlon

Leeds Triathlon Standard Distance – Yorkshire Championship Wave

Prep

After Richmond it was 4 weeks until Leeds. This seemed like a good time to buy some new trainers, plenty of time to break them in before the race. Because of issues with the tiny tongue on my 361 Stratomics, I decided to try a new trainer. I ended up with some Hoka Clifton 5. The high arch felt a little odd, but overall nice and comfy. However, during my second run in them, I got small blisters from the inside edge of the insole :’( New insoles solved the rubbing issue and I was running again within a week. But the skin in my arch hadn’t completely recovered. A week before the race and I still wasn’t sure which trainers to race in, so I tried a 10k in my old trainers. I don’t know if it was all in my head, but during the first 5k I was thinking these are the trainers for me, but during the second 5k I was convinced there was no cushioning left in my old trainers. I felt that the new trainers were better running down hills, so Hoka’s it was

I also switched my bike over to the tribar setup, which seemed speedy, and relaxing on my arms, but tough on my neck trying to see where I was going. My helmet was blocking my view when in an aero position. I thought I might need a new helmet. I looked at some full aero helmets with visors but was put off by the lack of airflow. When my current helmet appeared in some of my search results, I knew I must be doing something wrong. Sure enough it was pretty simple to adjust the position of my helmet, next it was the frame of my cycle glasses right in the middle of my line of sight. I’d always wondered why some glasses didn’t have a top frame. So frameless glasses bought and I was ready to race.

The minging weather on Saturday made me happy that I paid the extra tenner to register on race day. I spent the day putting everything I needed for race day into bags and boxes. The start and finish at Leeds are 7.5k apart, so there are 2 bag drops. I was getting more nervous about the logistics of what was going in which bag than the race itself.

I went to bed around 9pm, set my alarm for 4:30am, amazingly I slept like a baby. Woke up at 3:59am with a dead arm :-/ So I got up and had some porridge washed down with half a can of Monster.

After parking up at Roundhay Park, I was off to find registration. Walking over the brow of the hill I was parked on revealed the impressive sight of the transition area with thousands of bikes, I stopped to take a photo. The next thing that came into my head was, I’ve got to climb back up this big hill at the end of my race :-o

Registration was a breeze, setting up in transition and bag drops were also straight forward, all the prep paid off 😊

An hour before my race I drank a can of Monster energy and I decided to go find the swim start. The first races had already started and competitors were coming into transition. This was a new experience, lots of shouting from the marshals and general mayhem :-o Getting out of transition was a challenge, I decided the long route following the Bike Out route would give me a chance to visualise where I would be going. Even though I set off about an hour before my race start, I hadn’t expected the big queues to cross the race course. I was beginning to wonder if I’d make it on time, luckily there were only 2 crossings.

I spent a good 30 minutes getting into my wetsuit, pulling everything up as high as it would go. I watched a few races start and noticed several competitors were waiting at the pontoon as the main pack set off. I learnt last year in my first open water race that this loses way too much time that I can’t afford to lose.

Once my wave was called up, I was straight in. While we were all listening to the race briefing I saw someone join the end of the queue still putting their wetsuit on, I was impressed that someone can get into a wetsuit that close to the start, they turned around as they pulled the zip up and I noticed the unmistakable Redcar wind turbines 😊

Race

Swim

I set off with the air horn and almost immediately I was several lengths behind everyone. I thought, wow, I really am the slowest swimmer in Yorkshire. The good news was that my wetsuit felt comfy and I was sticking to a steady pace. After about 100m I started to catch up and pass people who were gasping for air. After the second buoy you are heading back towards the start and there was a confusing array or yellow buoys in the distance. From the briefing, I kept repeating keep the buoys on the left and trees on the right. Other swimmers seemed to be a long way either side of me, which was a bit disorienting when I wasn’t really sure where I was going. Towards the end of the swim I got a bit close to the shore and my hand was scraping the bottom of the lake, so I headed for some deeper water. While looking for the swim exit, I was surprised to see swans pretty close to me.

Getting out of the water was much easier than a rocky shore or sandy beach. I was thinking they should have these blue carpets at all races.

T1

The long run to the bike gave plenty of time to get the top half of my wetsuit off. Running out with my bike and I noticed my first mistake, I’d overloaded my race belt with gels and it was dropping down towards my knees :-o My next mistake was at the mount line, I saw the sign and a really thin line on the floor, but no-one around me got on their bikes, so I wondered if I’d read the sign correctly ? I carried on running with my bike. Then I realised people were mounting at the top of the incline and they were just avoiding cycling up the hill. I jumped on my bike and set off.

Bike

First thing I did on the bike was take a caffeine energy gel. The roads were busy and I was continually passing people, completely impossible to strictly apply any sort of drafting rules. During the ride, I found traffic lights a bit distracting, it’s a bit odd riding hard through red lights and I’d momentarily back off if the lights changed in front of me. I also misread one of the direction signs where I thought it was a hairpin turn, it wasn’t even that tight a turn but I’d slowed almost to a stop :-/ It was really nice to get lots of encouragement from spectators right around the course.

T2

At the end of the ride there was a long tight section on the approach to the bike dismount line, with barriers either side. Lots of riders were just cruising through this section and causing blockages. I was following a rider who had passed me just before entering this section. We got past several riders. When I could see the dismount line I unclipped from my pedals and swung my right leg over the bike ready to run off my bike. Unfortunately, the rider in front of me caught up with another rider just before the dismount line. I was in the centre of the lane, with two bikes in front of me at either side of the lane. When they came to dismount the both came to a complete stop before climbing off their bikes, they also both veered towards the centre and effectively crashed into each other. I had no chance of stopping and crashed into both of them :-/

Once I got around the two bikes, I remembered my race belt was still overloaded and was falling down again.

Run

The first thing I did on the run was to pull two gels out of my race belt. Thankfully, this sorted out the overloading. The run was described as a net downhill run, however, straight out of the park was uphill. It took me about 2K before I got into my rhythm. The city centre was also surprisingly hilly and with 2k to go cramps set in, I thought I was going to do a Paula Radcliffe in front of the crowds :-o maybe all that caffeine wasn’t such a good idea 💩Luckily the pain faded after a few hundred metres. Yet again, the crowd support was great throughout the whole run, but the city centre was amazing, a few shouts of “come on Redcar, The Mighty Redcar” put a big smile on my face. It was great approaching the finish line and hearing my name announced by the commentators. I’d done it, completed my first standard distance triathlon 😊

As there are no pockets on my short course tri-suit, I’d been stuffing empty gel wrappers down the front of my suit. When I got the photo at the finish line, I look a bit odd, but it’s still a great photo for the memory box 😊

Result

Initially, I was a little disappointed with my time 2:42. I was hoping for 2:30 and felt that everything had gone pretty well. It wasn’t until the drive home when I had time to think about the result that I realised I’d spent 10 minutes in the huge transitions 😊

Place (M/W) 484

Place (AC) 51

Place (Total) 583

Time Total (Brutto) 02:42:00

45th out of 81 in the overall 50-54 Male category

30th out of 69 entries or 57 starters in the Yorkshire Championship wave.

2nd in the 50-54 Male within the Yorkshire Championship, obviously this is my favourite stat 🤣