What a difference a week makes....

Woodhall Spa Sprint Triathlon

You can accomplish a lot within a week ! Within this last week I have been mostly dedicating my time to improving my cycling as my lap times on Monday at Mallory definately needed some improvement. Thankfully, my biking partner in crime has been back in the UK, so we managed to cram in two evening rides this week at a reasonably fast and challenging pace. Averaging 16mph on Thursday and 16.5mph on friday despite the very windy and wet conditions.

Todays Woodhall Spa Triathlon was special, as it was where I decided last year to give Triathlon a go, having turned up as a spectator that time around.

This year I arrived having now completed six Triathlons in total and looking for an improvement on both Mallory Park and the season opener at East Leake. At registration i didn't have my photo ID and had to go back to the car to get it, eventually though I was given my race no's and as an added bonus got a T-shirt that actually fitted me for a change ! I racked my bike in Transition, tested my OCD to the full, by checking everything three times over, and then made my way to the pool for todays fun and games........this is how it went.....

Swim 400m 10.17

The outdoor pool was a blessing , and I could have ordered in a six pack and stayed in the pool all day it was that nice ! Instead though, I had to compete and duly lined up for my starting slot at 8.44am, and complete 12 lengths of a 33 metre pool.

We were soon off and I could immediately tell that I was back in a swimming pool as I lost all of the bouyancy gain of the open water. We started in the shallow end and had to swim to the deep end and back - the deep end really feels like swimming uphill, but may be just my eyes playing tricks on me. The swim came and went without any real incident and I climbed out the pool ran into T1 in 10.17 seconds, just 2 secs off a PB, d'oh!!

T1 - 1.43, an improvement from last week, but slower than I am used to, I spent too long messing around with the race belt and lost valuable time as a result.

Cycling 24km - 52.23

A massive improvement and a PB average speed of 17mph ! The bike route is very deceptive as there are no hills or undulations that I remember but there are long steady inclines that you are not really aware of until you are halfway up them. There was also a wicked cross wind at times which confused me as it seemed to change direction. Regardless of these things, I span the pedals well, and knew the time was going to be a good one when I overtook three times the amount of people that overtook me. I'm just hoping the guy on the carrera bike (like my own) didn't think I was being funny when I said 'nice bike', I just hope he saw I was too riding a carrera when I overtook him.

T2 - 1.12 , maybe it was a long transition area, but I know I'm quicker than this...

Run 5K 25.50

My quickest Triathlon 5km, however I suspect that like Southwell it is measured short.My garmin was telling me that my pace was very good and it was pleasing to be able to keep my legs turning over after having ridden so hard on the bike. I crossed the finish line in 1.31.28 which I consider to be my best performance at Triathlon.

I ran into Hugh from Mansfield Tri Club whilst checking out the results. It was after reading Hugh's blog last year that gave me the idea of moving to multi sport. As we chatted, Rory Underwood, the ex England winger and keen Triathlete finished in a time that was marginally behind mine, I think I might be living off that for a while um.....

Next race is the Dambuster which will be my first crack at Olympic distance racing and this means that I will need to knuckle down in training for the next six weeks or so !