A win at the RAF Sprint Championships

Wednesday was the RAF Sprint Championships at RAF Cranwell. I arrived in good time so I could speak to Nick Davies as I needed to go in an early wave so I could be finished and get on my way to Stamford to pick Beth up as it was the last day of term. Nick put me in with the 8 minute swimmers with strict instructions to be considerate of the slower athletes in the water. There was lots of abuse being thrown at me by fellow competitors regarding the fact I was in wave 10 but a bit of friendly banter is part of the fun. I started my swim and was quite lucky really as I only got held up at about 200 meters for probably 5 seconds at most. I exited the water not knowing what time I'd done as I didn't start my watch but as it turns out I did the 2nd quickest swim of the day, a bit of a result for a "non swimmer". I had what turned out to be quite a slow transition all though it felt fast at the time and was out on the bike and on my way in very windy conditions, the new course is much better than the old one and quite a challenging route. After about 18 or so kilometers we picked up the old course and the road back in to camp was a strong tailwind and involved some high cadence in a 53x11 gear so I would think around the 40 mph mark. As I entered transition Pete Norris and Jase Walkley were spectating and told me I'd done an 8 min swim which gave me some concern so I bolted out onto the run and pushed very hard. I was passing people at an alarming rate but don't forget I was in the middle of the race and not with the fast boys. I continued to run hard and finished with the only run under 20 minutes to take the win. I then did my first ever T3 as I threw everything into a bag, chucked on shorts and t-shirt and ran to the car to set off for Stamford arriving with just 2 mins to spare. I didn't find out I'd won until about 4:15 when Mat and Pete text me to let me know. So that's it, RAF Sprint Champion for the 2nd year on the run, I guess I'll have to go for it again next year now!

Tomorrow (Sunday the 10th) I am racing again in the David Lloyd Lincoln Sprint Triathlon, fingers crossed for a good result then on Tuesday its back to the important business of longer stuff with a long bike/run brick planned, this will be the last big outing before Antwerp 70.3 on the 24th July.