Eton Supersprints - Sunday 18th May 2014

[CCS]

What: Eton Super Sprints
Where: Eton, Dorney Lake
Organiser: Human Race
Distance: Swim 400m (Row Lake), Bike 21.2km (4 laps), Run 5km (2 laps)
Marshalling: Kayaks, none on bike besides transition mount and dismount, at turn around points
Facilities: Toilets/changing/showers in boat house, LBS presence, wiggle, catering vans
Technical: Chip timing, swim hat
Freebies: Grey Do Triathlon T-shirt - quite useful for painting/decorating but have loads. Should have thought to get an XL and give it to the BAT, who wears his ones quite a lot

Another repeat visit to this race (so will try to keep this brief) – always good for benchmarking.

Feeling quietly confident – though with a bit of a nagging suspicion that I may have raced a bit too much recently.
Civilised 10:50am start – so felt confident enough to deviate from my minimal breakfasting plan… perhaps first mistake.

Got to Dorney Lake early (a C-S family trait that seems to be getting worse as I get older… the compulsion to arrive places “in good time” leaving plenty of time to faff around nervously on arrival).

Long walk to registration from car park as usual – and on entering the tent, realized that I hadn’t brought my wallet (easy way to control shopping) – so also hadn’t got my BTF licence. Luckily, managed to scrape together emergency funds from within my swimming bag – but had to fork out £6 for a day licence…. Grrr…

Unusually for Dorney at this time of year, it was a beautiful day… hot, sunny, a bit windy as always (though after riding through the great gale of the A31 last weekend, a light breeze holds no fear for me and my wok). Fluffy was definitely conspicuous by his flashiness in transition though!

Swim
Water not too cold – though that was NEVER 18 degrees as HumanRace claimed!
Deployed my usual tactic of keeping out of trouble wide to the left. First hundred metres or so was a bit of fruitless splashing around – a really fast pair of feet set off just in front of me, and I tried to follow them, before realizing that I am just not that fast a swimmer – instead, picked up one of the rowing lane ropes to follow, and relaxed. Bit of biff round the first buoy – someone else swimming at the same pace as me, but pulling really badly to the left kept driving me wide all the way home. Did give her a bit of a clunk on the head (not deliberate; stopped to apologise).

400m in 8.05 – one of my worst times ever – but it’s all fairly marginal when it comes to swimming, so not too bothered.

Stats: 10/87 W40+; 36/181 W; 252/650 overall

T1
OK.
Long run from swim exit. Really out of practice at getting wetsuit off – made the usual mistake of taking off goggles & hat first, then realizing that I can’t take top of wetsuit off with a bundle of stuff in my hands. Still, fairly respectable time compared to rest of wave

1:29

Bike
Flat course; smooth tarmac – release Fluffy!
We were flying!
Didn’t push too hard – sat up off the tribars on the bends etc – but passing loads of people (and a lot of shouting from me to make sure that others knew I was there – is that rude?)
Almost a nasty incident on the 3rd lap – 3 gents on mountain bikes from the previous wave were taking up the whole track… made the foolish call to overtake on the left – and just as I shouted this, the inside gent swerved inwards. We were forced onto the grass… started to brace myself for wipeout, but somehow recovered, and after deploying a few choice Tansley-esque phrases, were on our way.

21.2km in 34:43

Stats: 1/87 W40+; 1/181 W; 25/650 overall

Pleased with that (sort of... see later...)– proper TT pace!

T2
1 min
Nice short run from bike in; out again with minimal faffing

Run
Had a feeling I might be in the lead.
That’s where it started to go horribly wrong…
Very quickly started to feel that I had overdone things on the bike… feeling like I was going to vomit/faint, and in need of a bit of a sit down. Grabbed a water; sipped; stopped for a bit; ran on; stopped again. Felt a bit better; ran on. It was hot and painful – just kept focusing on the yellow water stands at either end of the run loop (which never seemed to get any closer).
Finally over the line in 27:02. Had been hoping for 25, so a bit disappointed, but pleased to have got round.

Stats: 29/87 W40+; 76/181 W; 391/650 overall

Overall 1:12:19 – had been aiming for 1:10, so quite pleased that apart from the run disaster, it was on track.
By the RaceTimingSystems website, that puts me first in the W40+ wave? No prize on the day (these are usually handed out as you cross the finish)… have sent a terribly British polite e-mail to HumanRace to query…

Lots of lessons to learned:
- Don’t be too blase about packing (though on advice of the marshall, I now have a photo of my BTF card on my phone, which they apparently will accept)
- Need to take more care about bike pacing – I now have the skills to really hurt myself on the bike – but it’s probably not clever to do so if I have to go for a run after, rather than the commonly accepted follow up to biking (drinking tea and eating cake)

Next stop H10/8 on Staurday…

[IanM]

Nice win, well done!

I guess the counter to the bike pace is, if you'd have gone round say 1m slower on the bike, would you have been more than 1m faster on the run?

Good luck for next weekend!

[kfjatek]

Awesome result & an absolutely brutal bike leg! Too bad about overcooking it on the bike for the run - but then, better here than in Windsor when you have Bopo's & Tritans' breath on your back, no? (somehow this doesn't sound right; blame it on my foreigner speak..)

Well done.

[Worrying Will]

Another Cracker CCS. Well done

[Jack Hughes]

Schweet.

Still blame the swimming rather than the cycling.

Cycle too hard == no legs.
Swim too hard == stomach bloating + vom.

[King Sad]

CCS wrote

Flat course; smooth tarmac – release Fluffy!

Excellent - well done

[Bopomofo]

Flat course; smooth tarmac – release Fluffy!

unleash hell.jpg

after deploying a few choice Tansley-esque phrases

Come on, own up.... we need the script.


Great racing [again] Clare. Interesting to hear how a bit of a push on the bike knocked a couple of minutes off the run. I really think you need to do a triathlon every other week to ever get the pacing right.

Still got my dosh on you for Windsor. Good work.