Skipton Triathlon - April 2008
Today was the day! The first triathlon outing of the year. The first triathlon of 2008, and one that I'd never done before too. It was a good plan to enter this one as it's rather nearer home than some of the others that I've done in the past. Also, I had heard good things about this race so I was feeling pretty hopeful from that point of view. Looking at things in terms of the weather I've been less than happy this week. I had a horrible ride out in hail earlier on in the week and have been eyeing the cold, wind and general wetness of the weather with some trepidation as the week has progressed. I was also nervous because I'd never done the race before, because it was my first triathlon since last September and because I've been feeling very, very tired after an incredibly busy weekend and week leading up to it.
It took us just under an hour to get there and the car parking for competitors was nice and easy to find. The postcode given on the website resulted in the satnav taking us directly to the car park - brilliant. It was a bit of a trek from there to the swimming pool as they didn't want competitors clogging up the actual car park for its normal users, but it was easy enough to find. Slight struggle getting all the stuff up the hill and all the steps from where we'd parked, possibly it was designed to be your warm up! Anyway, we followed the general flow of people and found where we needed to be quite easily. I was soon registered and secure in the knowledge that I'd arrived in plenty of time. Far too early in other words, I'd be able to leave a bit later next time, now that I know what it's like and where things are. Registration was quick and well organised, even if the weather was trying to mess things up, attempting to blow away some of the numbers. Still, numbers and timing chips were given out quickly and efficiently - always a good start.
The swim is 400m in a lovely pool. It said on the website it is pretty new and it clearly was. You can see on Daniel's photo it looks clean and bright - it was. The lanes were a good width and there was no overcrowding. I always had room to swim, there were only generally two or three people in the lane at any one time. As usual, I felt much better once I'd started swimming. Beforehand the nerves had really started to kick in. Still, I felt I was swimming well and getting into a good flow. A nice rhythm that didn't get messed up by trying to get around other people because I only overtook one person and did so easily at the end of a length. I swam faster than I'd expected again, that's at least the last two races I've managed that. If I can keep it up then I'll need to start putting down different swim start times on my entry forms. I'd put myself down as 8:15 which was pretty realistic last year, but was out of the water around 7:45. I'm very pleased with that, especially as I'm finding that quite easy to do at the moment!
My official swim time is much, much longer than that as transition was very long indeed. We had to run out of the fire door at the back of the pool, round to the front of the building, up the steps, up the grassy hill some way before reaching the racking, sort everything out that you would usually need to do in transition, then run further up the grassy hill with the bike. The result being that by the time I reached the timing mat it was reading the time as 11:01. That still isn't you at the mount line either, that came about another minute later after a muddy bit of hill finally took you out onto the road! A very long transition.
The bike was a 20K route and suitably easy to follow. There were marshals at all the crucial points along with signs to make sure you were going the right way. I felt I put in a reasonable performance. I pushed pretty hard, was generally suitably out of breath. It was cold and windy out there and I was glad I'd taken the time in transition to put a jacket on. I think undulating is probably a fair description of this course, there certainly wasn't anything much that you could call flat! I'd read warnings on Tritalk about the amount of traffic on the route, this turned out to be true. However, that doesn't really bother me because of where we live. I tend to have to do quite a bit of training surrounded by buses and lorries, today it was lorries and caravans as predicted! This didn't pose any sort of a problem apart from the idiot lorry driver who found it necessary to beep at me, I was in at the side, not weaving about and clearly taking part in a race - grumble! Ah well, if that's the worst problem I can think of then things probably went pretty well. I enjoyed the cycle despite the weather and the streaming nose that all the wind caused and managed to be back at the timing mat in 54:10.
The run was a two lap affair, going downhill from transition, along the canal towpath and then back round. The first drag back up to transition was the hardest bit for me. My legs were feeling tired and I seemed to be crawling along, not very encouraging with another lap still to go. However, things seemed to loosen off as I got into my second lap and I felt I was running a bit better. Looking at my watch I was fairly sure I'd manage under half an hour, thus beating anything I achieved last year... and I did it. My run time was recorded as 29:04. I was well chuffed with that, it's quite a bit better than I had been doing last year. My run of good results appears to be continuing. I feel really good about the way things are going at the moment and I'm really enjoying taking part in the races.
My overall time for the race was 1:34:17, pretty respectable I reckon and a good start to my season. I would definitely do this race again. It was well organised, I enjoyed doing it and it was a good one for the spectators too. It was easy for my family to get into the pool to watch the swim then scoot around so they could watch transition, then meet me back off the bike before watching me out and back on both run laps. The kids were in good voice and sporting their supporters' sweatshirts. A good day out all round.
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