My fingers were itching. I had not done a triathlon for nearly three weeks. I needed a hit. Only two races were taking place over the bank holiday: one on the south coast and one near Nottingham. Coalville Triathlon it was, then.
It is targetted at first-timers, so looking at last year’s results I thought I had a chance to do pretty well. The fastest bike split was 42 minutes, for example, and I knew I could go sub-40 over 20km. Was the bike course longer? Was it on narrow roads where I would be stuck behind other cyclists, or having to wait for cars at junctions? Surely it could not be that easy.
We arrived before the leisure centre had opened and found a queue at the door to get to the toilets. No queue at registration, thankfully, and I was able to rack up with no problems.
The swim
The swim was pool-based. I donned my Huub swim cap and entered the pool. I was in a middle wave and only had to overtake one person. Everyone else seemed to have given an accurate swim time, except one lass who was smashing it with tumble turns at the end of every length.
T1 went well. I remembered to open the velcro on my shoes before the race which saved a little bit of time.
The bike
Having driven for nearly two hours to nice flat Leicestershire, I got a rude awakening as to why everyone was taking 42 minutes on the bike. The first two kilometres were all uphill and the entire course was lumpy. There was only one section where I could get on the aero bars.
My bike computer was not picking up my power metre, so I tried to restart it. This was successful – but then I lost my heart rate. A few other things slowed me down. As I was coming down the hill, a lorry pulled out to avoid a car parked on their side of the road and I had to hit the brakes. On the final hill, I got stuck behind some cars who were themselves stuck behind slower cyclists.
I finished the bike section in 43 minutes. This was a minute behind the winner’s time last year, so I was pretty happy with that.
The run
T2 was okay. It was my first time using elastic laces and no socks. It was a bit difficult to get one of them on but I managed it eventually. I then tried to run out of T2 with my helmet on, though. I realised this five metres from my bike and had to run back.
The run was on a trail that was narrow at times. It was an out-and-back which made it difficult to pass people at times as the path was overgrown and I did not want to imped people coming the other way. I ran a 22:08, which is just off my 5km PB, but Garmin thinks I only ran 4.5km. One person passed me, who went on to run an 18-minute 5km and place 3rd overall.
The result
I finished in a time of:
1:17:13
And my splits were:
| Stage | 2019 |
|---|---|
| Swim | 10:16 |
| T1 | 0:50 |
| Bike | 42:58 |
| T2 | 1:00 |
| Run | 22:08 |
Check out those slick transition times. The days of 5-minute T1s are long gone, at least in short format racing. That was good enough for 14th overall out of a field of 106. I was the 11th male and 5th male veteran 30-39.
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Tags: nottingham, triathlon
This entry was posted on Monday, September 2nd, 2019 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.