Nestled in the far side of the small town of Pateley Bridge is a school and leisure centre. Which, every September, play host to the Nidderdale sprint triathlon. As it is such a beautiful area, I decided it was worth making the effort to race there.
It’s been a long season: this would be my ninth triathlon, making a total of four sprints, four standards and one middle distance, plus a bunch of Go Tris are duathlons. And, if I had known I was doing my first middle distance race the week before, I would have thought twice. But, as I signed up for this one long before, I decided it would make a nice cooldown event to finish to the year.
We decided to make it a family day out. It’s been baking-hot sun for pretty much every race I have done so far. But the first race that Elina and Venla joined me for looked like this…
Still, if we thought we had it bad, the leisure centre staff had to clean all of the grass and mud up after we had gone.
The swim
The swim was 400 metres. This would normally be 16 lengths but the Nidderdale pool is only 20 metres long, making it 20. We were set off at regular intervals and I was just starting a length when the guy behind me set off at pace. He tagged me to get past on his return length.
The only problem was that he couldn’t keep the pace up. Within a few lengths he was struggling and I had caught him. As I only had two lengths left I couldn’t be bothered to tag him back, but the woman behind me did. Let this be a lesson to us all: pace yourself at the start or you’ll find it rather embarrassing when everyone catches you up again.
The bike
Given where Pateley Bridge is, the bike course was surprisingly flat. A few rolling hills and a little climb at the end, but mostly it followed the road along the side of the reservoir, making for beautiful viewing.
It has been raining all day, it was still raining and the roads were covered in surface water. In my mind, that was a good excuse to descent the hills at a sensible pace. Other athletes felt differently though and came screaming down the hills. So, I lost about four places there, despite being a much stronger climber. Towards the end, I took a few places of my own.
Unfortunately, just before the end, my chain dropped and I had to unclip, climb off and put it back on. I got back on the bike and rounded the corner to see I was at the end of the bike leg: almost close enough to just run it in.
My shoes were soaked by the end from all the surface spray. Maybe I should have worn my tri shoes with the holes in the bottom to drain water.
The run
I felt good on the run. Nobody passed me and I overtook plenty. One marshall even commented about how fast I had come back, which is not unusual for me because my swim and bike times mean I am started with the slower athletes, but once I hit the run I am in my element.
The results
I was 74th overall, out of a field of 167. My total time was:
1:26:23
The winner was 1:02:15. My splits were 12:42 for the swim, 2:02 for T1, 46:23 for the bike, 2:08 for T2 and 23:07 for the run. All of that is pretty good, especially for a race where I was taking it easy.
12:42 for the swim doesn’t really represent my actual time as you come out of the pool and into the sports hall, where you can put your shoes on, before crossing the timing matt and going into transition. So my swim time was really sub-10.
The bike time would have been a bit faster if I hadn’t dropped my chain and my 5km PB race time is 22:39, so to be only 30 seconds behind that feels like a great result.
The aftermath
The season is over and I never have to ride my bike again.
I probably will, of course. But I’m looking forward to taking a break from training and being a bit more flexible in what I do and when I do it. And, of course, having done nine races, a bunch of Go Tris and half a dozen sportives, too, if I do continue it would now be entirely justifiable to do so on a new, fancier bike.
But for now I’m looking forward to sitting on the sofa all winter and getting fat.
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Tags: north yorkshire, pateley bridge, triathlon
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 16th, 2018 at 11:00 am and is filed under Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.