This weekend was a busy one, Saturday was the Dambuster triathlon, a world championship qualifier and an interesting day really. First thing of note was that I'd decided to ride my new bike that I only picked up Thursday lunch time, that was going to be a gamble but all in I managed to set it up to a good enough position using the turbo trainer and although it needs a couple more tweaks yet it went well (well enough for the 24th fastest bike split of the day) with a 1:06 on a very windy day. That was the next thing of note, the weather! As usual the weather was not great but when is it ever good for this race? A few weeks of heavy rain meant there was water in the lake and lots of it, as a result of the heavy rain the water temp was only 12 degrees so BTA regulations meant we were only allowed a max swim of 1km so the race directors changed it to a 1km swim instead of 1.5km. We also had a beach start instead of a deep water start. The swim went quite well and I exited over the timing mat in 14:21 and then it was bike time, it was very very windy so I opted to run the 50 front instead of the 80 which was a good decision. The bike went well and I felt comfy on the new bike, it descends well and handles the cross winds, its a nice predictable handling bike. At then end of the bike I made a minor mistake by reaching the bike onto the transition rack at the same time as undoing my helmet, I was told off by the race referee but not given a penalty as it was a borderline decision but I was delayed by about 30-40 seconds whilst my error was pointed out. I had done the windy 42km bike course in 1:06:25, now it was time to run and I think that's the first time I've ever felt the wind impacting on my speed whilst running, one direction over the dam was slow and the other was a lot quicker, I ran well and clocked a 33:58 for a total time of 1:57:13 which was 14th overall and 2nd in my age group, given it's a world championship qualifier so in theory a stronger field I'm pretty happy with that as I didn't taper for this event it was just training.
Sunday was back to work (training) so I was out on the bike for 2 hours which I managed to average at 19.2 mph followed by a 9.5 mile run averaging 6:17's, a good effort the day after a race when my natural instinct is telling me I should be on a rest day! All in a good weekends work :-)
The bike, I have bought a Specialized Transition with full ultegra groupset, set it up with my own wheels so the Grammo carbon 50's I got with it are for sale should anyone be interested? Pics will follow later when I get home from work.
