Race report by Connor

Date: 30th June
Conditions: ⛅️

I only had 2 aims for this race having only done one olympic distance duathlon before – finish under 3 hours and try and swim! Well I didn’t have any emails notifying the swim was cancelled, but I was convinced my ambition of under 3 hours was a fantasy as I was still recovering from a nasty cold which took me out for a few days.

Nevertheless I woke up early Sunday morning and made my way to Ellesmere with Josh and his friend who wanted to come for support (and breakfast while I was on the bike course). Having been to the venue before I knew where registration was and quickly headed to transition to set up. After a quick chat with El and Morgan who were volunteering on the bike course I got my wetsuit on and headed for the swim start.

This would be my first open water swim race so I was a bit apprehensive. I kept in the middle of the pack for the mass start so I had some guides ahead of me as my goggles had already fogged up. For the first 100m I kept up with the guys at the front, but then they slowly got ahead.. this set a precedent for the rest of the swim as my technique really took a hit. After two laps I was firstly at the back with most competitors having already left for the bike. I exited and ran towards transition, stretching out my calf on the way which started to cramp up.

I was pleased with my T1, it was quick considering I stopped to put socks and shoes on first, then set out on the bike. Having done (part of) the bike course last year at the sprint I knew it was going to be slightly hilly. I flew past El and Morgan, who were at the first aid station on each lap of the bike course for the ultimate and half racers, to start my slightly shorter Olympic lap. No issues on the bike course, but it was hilly and windy at times. My overtake to overtaken ratio was good but most of the course was shared for all 4 distances. At around half way I noticed that I was doing better than I expected, I started to think that I could finish the bike in well under my 90min target. After a final stretch back into Ellesmere I finished the bike in 1:24 which gave me a great start for the run.

Second transition went so quick I was convinced I’d forgot something, my supporters didn’t have enough time to get from the bike in to run out to cheer me on (a quick scan of the results and I did the fastest T2, what was everyone else doing??)

Out into the run I was slow for the first 2km, close to 6mins per km. I didn’t know what pace to aim for as all my previous races have been sprints (having removed bham olympic tri/duathlon from my memories), and my other run race being a half marathon. Once my legs had got used to it I sped up and kept a nice consistent pace for the first 5km lap. At this point most of the course was made up of olympic and sprint, but the half and full runners were just starting at this point on the shared track. My motivation was that I only had to do 2 laps of 5km, not 3 or 6 of the 4 miler… After completely missing the turnaround point and almost finishing too soon, I was back on to lap 2. The run course is fairly hilly, so going up the hills for a second time was tough and I did take a few walking steps to help. Coming back into the final kilometre I picked up the pace finally making it over the line with a race finish time of 2:56:30.

Lessons learned:

• Don’t mess around with your goggles while in the water about to start otherwise they’ll fog up
• Swim like you can actually swim, to quote Josh afterwards “it looked like you forgot how to swim”
• Don’t ignore the Marshall who asks “final lap or turning around?”
• Learn to actually pace for a 10km

Highlights:

• Water was lovely and warm for swimming and not much current
• Bike was much quicker than expected and actually enjoyable
• Run was tough but also fairly enjoyable with the weather as it was fully paved
• Getting better at speeding up my transitions