Last year, the Evolve Quarter Triathlon was my first of the year due to COVID cancelling or postponing everyone else. This year, it was race 14 in the 2021 WTS (Worfolk Triathlon Series). It’s so good to be racing again!
The swim
Mass starts are back. As mass starts have not been a thing for the past two years, this was the first swim that I was competitive enough to be in the pack on a mass start. It’s annoying. Bodies flying everywhere. An endless stream of athletes unable to sight. No serious incidents, though.
The bike
Pleased with this. Last year, I really struggled to stay down on my aero bars due to back pain that I was hoping I had eliminated with four months of daily stretching. I had not. But after twelve months of daily stretching, things are looking more hopeful.
Also, I was highly incentivised to stay on them as a tailwind helped us on the first half of the circuit and a headwind slowed us down on the second.
The run
Another happy performance. I wanted to take it easy on the run to save my legs for last week. And thanks to a solid bike split, I saw I had 59 minutes to run it in in under three hours. Even so, I took plenty of scalps and nobody overtook me.
The result
Nearly 13 minutes faster than last year and comfortable under three hours. The course was the same as last year: 1,000-metre swim, 47 km bike and 10 km run.
2:48:14
Here are my splits:
| Disipline | 2021 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|
| Swim | 25:39 | 26:27 |
| T1 | 1:31 | 2:26 |
| Bike | 1:31:39 | 1:37:48 |
| T2 | 2:02 | 3:38 |
| Run | 47:23 | 50:50 |
| Total | 2:48:14 | 3:01:09 |
The event was very well organised. There was no real queue to get in as all the volunteers kept the whole process moving with check-in, registration, parking, and checking of details and bikes all split into separate sections. We did have to wait until all of the half competitors finished the bike leg to retrieve our biles, but at least we could get our bags and car keys before then.
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Tags: triathlon
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 19th, 2021 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.