London triathlon

[Jon H]

Carole Shaw (a.k.a. Mrs Snoop), Matthew (one of my colleagues) and myself teamed up yesterday to do the London triathlon as a team relay. The entry fee was paid by my employer who also stumped up a grand in sponsorship for the charity Concern Worldwide, so we were entered under the team name "Genesis Oil & Gas".

This was first every foray into this triathlon thing, Carole had done one a few years ago at Brighton, and Matthew being a sporty Aussie had done quite a few before. Once we'd sorted out the timing chip, race numbers, and wristbands we headed into the transition area to pick a suitable spot. Then we split up as Carole went off the swim assembly area, I got kitted up in the transition, and Matthew went to chill out for a while.

Next time I saw Carole she was running towards me in transition in her swimsuit carrying her wetsuit. Timing chip exchanged and I was off on the bike leg. Got out on the course and started catching people, which continued for the next hour. I counted 5 people come past me, and I lost count of the number I passed. One of those I caught was Richard Viney, whom I recognised as he was also in Addiscombe colours. I guess he was also in a work-related team. To get back into transition we had to go up a ramp up from the service road up to the main floor of the Excel centre; I hit this at full speed and the impact broke the valve on the front tub so by the time I was at the top I had a flat. Luckily this was right before the dismount so it didn't matter. Matthew was waiting for me, we swapped the chip and number and he was off and running. For the team relay there was a point just before the finish where the swimmer and cyclist could jump in and join the runner to cross the finish line together. Somehow Carole & I managed to miss Matthew, so he crossed the line alone and we caught up with him later and managed to get our medals.

Found the result online this morning. 2:20:13 put us in 26th place out of 393 teams, so not too shabby.

I think I might have got the bug; I'm off to cut the sleeves off my skinsuit

[Ivor]

Brilliant Jon!
I've been pondering dipping my toe in the murky sport, since I quite enjoy this running business and don't actually seem too bad at it.... although might keep it all separate for now (besides the kit is seriously dodgy). Getting ready for a half marathon in October, then perhaps a marathon next year.

[Andrew G]

Well done Carole, Jon, and Bruce . Chatting about this today I quite fancy doing a team one next year purely for the selfish reasons of wanting to do the 40km TT on closed roads myself.

[carl f]

Well done Jon
How about this for a relay andrew- http://www.hevercastle.co.uk/WhatsOn/ta ... fault.aspx
I'll do the run........

[Jon H]

Carl, when I got back to my car there was a flyer on the windscreen for the Hever Castle triathlon. It ssems to be weighted towards cyclists, as the swim is half the distance of a normal olympic tri, the bike is the normal 40k, and the run is 8k instead of 10k. I'm quite tempted to have a bash solo.

[Andrew G]

Hmmm, it was the closed roads bit in London that was quite appealing Carl. This looks like it could be a 40k bike leg on a Sporting course on open roads, £25 seems a bit steep for that as I can do that for £7-8 in a normal TT. Or have I missed something.

[Paul H]

I thought you were joking Jon when you said you got the bug. We do brick sessions on thursdays if you or anybody else fancy them.

Triathlons are expensive compared to cycle racing which irritates me quite a bit. There is more to them (setting up transitions etc) and they do not have a long history of being organised by volunteers and clubs.

[Dominic]

Do you not still get a goody bag for every starter included in the price anymore

[Jon H]

Dominic, there were goody bags (which I forgot to collect) and as much free Gatorade as you could possibly drink.

[carl f]

Andrew for the privilege of racing on closed roads,london tri would have set you back £75(per person if entered as a relay team) for racing your bike around south london
No your not missing anything,most tri and duathlon events are expensive to enter..........

Good luck Jon, Hever looks like a good race

[Andrew G]

Cripes that's ridiculously expensive. There may not be a history of club running/volunteer organisation, but something like the London Tri has a fair ol' bundle of advertising. Advertising normally would be done to cover the costs. It all sounds a bit like seeing it as an excuse to rip people off, similar to the UK Etape where it was £40 to enter compared to £25ish for any other sportive (and they're not cheap).

Sod bike legs of a team, I'll stick to my Testing for £7-8 a pop - and I'd rather have the cake than gatorade .

[carl f]

I guess it must cost lots of money to hold an event in central london,or windsor or somewhere like that,such as the hire of the centre,policing,getting the roads closed, barriers and all that but i agree its very expensive,and yes they are cashing in on the recent tri boom as are the bigger sportives
There are much cheaper tri's you can enter a relay team in such as the harefield races that hillingdon tri put on
They cost about £25 for the individual entry or divide by three if you want to relay it. The bike leg is 26k open road but its very early on nice country roads so there is hardly any traffic

[Dominic]

[quote="Andrew G"]Cripes that's ridiculously expensive. There may not be a history of club running/volunteer organisation, but something like the London Tri has a fair ol' bundle of advertising. Advertising normally would be done to cover the costs. It all sounds a bit like seeing it as an excuse to rip people off, similar to the UK Etape where it was £40 to enter compared to £25ish for any other sportive (and they're not cheap).

Sod bike legs of a team, I'll stick to my Testing for £7-8 a pop - and I'd rather have the cake than gatorade .

[Marek]

This was one of my early season goals and actually quite enjoyed it. After all the faffing of going up the day before and hitting the mother of all traffic jams to arrive on Sunday in time for my race I was hoping that it was going to be worth it in terms of the event.

This was the first Olympic Tri that I have done for around 6 years so I was feeling a little nervous in the run up to the swim section. Over 400 people in the water all wanting to start at the same time. I made sure I was near the front, actually I was right at the front. After a few minutes of waiting for everyone to get lined up we were off. A few guys absolutely went for it from the start. I only have one speed in the swim so just got into gear. It was really hard to get into a rhythm as there were people all over my legs and people at the side, it was quite disconcerting. After about 300 metres or so the water cleared a bit and it was a bit easier to get into gear, but not ideal as people would sometimes come flying across you.

Got to the end of the swim and it was jump out whip off the wetsuit, put into a bag and then run to the bike. Got stuck behind a couple of slow boys but soon got passed them. Put on my shoes and socks (yes I like to wear socks for this type of thing), had a bit of banana and then helmet and sunglasses on and then the long run in my cleats to the start. This was about 500m or so of running in cleats. Absolute nightmare, those with proper tri shoes were going flying past as they could run in bare feet and then put the shoes on whilst riding. I lost a load of time in transition.

Then onto the bike. Pretty flat with a few rises for bridges and tunnels a headwind on the way out and a nice tailwind on the way back. Was overtaking absolutely loads of people on the bike. Some of these guys have got some amazing equipment, is really amusing to watch as they go ok on the flats but as soon as they get to a slight incline it is like someone has just attached a jcb to the back of their bikes. Really satisfying to overtake all the tri kitted bikes and aero helmet types as I just used my plain bike with no aero aids.

Onto the run. Unfortunately due to time recently my run training consisted of a 5km run in the week prior to the Tri. Unfortunately the last time I did a run was over a month ago, not ideal. After about 7km of the run I started to fade and the last 3km were tough.

Overall times were something like 27mins for the swim, 59mins for the bike and 40mins for the run. Overall was 2hr 18mins, yes that is over 10 mins for the transitions, whoops. 29th in my age group, am pretty pleased. Would I do this event again, probably not. The hassle of getting there and the numbers of people made it a bit too commercialised and busy, I think I will do smaller ones in the future. A good experience though and am pleased I had as a target this year.

Cheers

Marek.....

[Jon H]

Nice one Marek.
I tried running in cycling shoes with cleats too, which goes some way to explain our 5+ minute time for the first transition. For the second one I stopped just after the timing mat, took my shoes off and ran in socks for a much more respectable 2 minute transition.