My first international parkrun done! There were so many tourists from the UK that they did the briefing in English. Fælledparken is an inner-city park in Copenhagen and the course consists of three laps of the path around the park.
Sun City Triathlon is a sprint triathlon with a sea swim that takes place in Sunderland. I signed up to get some additional sea swimming in ahead of Copenhagen.
It was a 7:30am mass start so we drove up the night before and stayed over. Registration was in the Grand Sunderland Hotel but could have done with some signage as it took me a while to find the main entrance. Thankfully, I eventually did, registered and headed to transition to setup and eat some breakfast.
The race brief was short. Long race briefings are annoying, so that was nice. But in this case, I could have done with a few more details as the no-overtaking zone wasn’t fully explained or signed. Also, the run course was not clear because the map they had sent out was for their duathlon and the instructions also referred to the duathlon. So, even having read the athlete information several times, I was still unclear. But in their defence, they did also publish a video of the course that I did not watch.
It was a cloudy but warm day on the beach and we had the chance to acclimatise in the water for a few minutes. It was super-cold. The race information suggested it would be 15 degrees. The RNLI were saying 12. I am not sure who was right, but my face was super cold but when I put it in. I did some sprinting up and down the beach to try and warm up.
Once the air horn went, the temperature was less of an issue as it was game on. I positioned myself at the back and just like Castle Howard this was a mistake. I kept getting boxed in between people switching between crawl and breaststroke. I still think of myself was a weaker swimmer so I need to change that mindset as I’m consistently stronger and faster than the back row now.
Apparently it was just moving into jellyfish season so every time I felt something or saw something in the water I was paranoid I was about to be stung. Perhaps I should have spent less time thinking about the athlete who said she went into anaphylactic shock after being stung, and more time thinking about how Daniela Ryf was stung during the 2018 IRONMAN World Championship and still went to both win the race and set a new course record.
The sea was calm but even on a calm day, there is the constant swell of the waves. Once I found some clear water, I found it easy to settle into a rhythm where I could time my strokes and my breathing with the swell. This got a little thicker on the way back as it came from behind me. The course was supposed to be triangular but there were swimmers heading off in completely different directions so I just set a line towards the beach.
The run from the swim quite a distance: up the beach, up the steps, along the promenade, up some more steps, along more promenade and finally into transition. At this point, my hands decided it had been a very cold swim after all and did not want to take my wetsuit off. I also managed to hit the lap button twice in T1, recording the entire bike section as T2.
It was a relatively straightforward bike course with a couple of U-turns and some gentle gradients but nothing to get out of the saddle for. Very little wind, either, until I was on my fourth and final lap and thinking to myself “so nice it is not windy” before I turned a corner and hit a strong headwind. I used 50% aero bars with some hoods on the up and down bits, averaging a very unsatisfying 29.9 kph average moving speed.
The run went out along the cliff tops before dropping down onto the beachfront and crossing under itself beneath a bridge. Due to not properly understanding the aforementioned instructions and the route being unmarked, I got to a crossing early on and wasn’t sure if it was straight on across. Unfortunately, the marshall was on his phone at the time aod not paying attention but luckily there was another athlete from Sun City Tri just behind me who knew where he was going. After this it was smooth sailing.
My official time was:
1:27:26
That gave me 60th place out of a field of 106. However, if you include the 4 DNFs and 21 DNSs, that moves me into the top half 😂. Here are the splits:
| Section | Time |
|---|---|
| Swim | 21:47 |
| T1 | 2:31 |
| Bike | 41:21 |
| T2 | 1:17 |
| Run | 20:30 |
The swim time includes the three-minute run up to transition, so the actual swimming time was under 19 minutes. My watch clocked the run at 4.65 km. It is usually short, but not that short, so I think the run course was less than 5 km.
It’s coming home! It turns out that treating women as equals has many benefits. Who knew?
And what a final it was. The excitement of England going one up. Then Germany equalising and thinking “here we go again, classic England”. But then the women turn the narrative on its head and score a winner. Talk about a shocking plot twist. Definitely not something you would find in a Chip Driver novel.
York Triathlon is a sprint distance race based at York Sport Village.
Registration gave me an C5 envelope and pointed to a packet with inside it that they said contained my stickers. What they actually meant was that the envelope as a whole contained the stickers and not the packet inside it. Which, when I opened it, turned out to be a bag of oats. I was there early enough to get a bacon sandwich (avoiding the wasps) and queue for one of the two toilets that seemed to be available: one gender-neutral one and one in the men’s changing room.
There was no assigned racking in transition so I put my bike in the first available space. However, after walking through it, the swim in and run out were at one end, and the bike in and out were at the other. So, to minimise time spent running in my bike shoes, I moved my bike as close to the bike in/out as possible. At this point, a technical official told me off for pushing my bike without my helmet fastened. This isn’t a rule.
The swim was a 400-metre pool-based swim that sort of snakes down the pool: there were four lanes and you had to do four lengths in each one before moving onto the next one. This worked well as it meant the lanes were nice and wide with plenty of space for overtaking. I’m sick of people giving bad estimates for their swim time and swimming over me so I’ve now added 30 seconds onto my actual swim time and that worked really well.
UK Triathlon (the event organiser) do not require you to wear a swim cap for their pool-based events so I was able to race in my Hyde Park Harriers swim cap.
The bike course could arguably be described as off-road. It was all on hard surface but neither was it on a road: it went through the pathways of York University campus. THere were cobbles (flat but often loose), lots of tight turns, speed bumps, road furniture and occasionally harassed-looking students wheeling large suitcases. I felt like I was playing the school level on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. To its credit, it was car-free.
The highly technical nature of the course meant that anyone with good bike handling skills could gain a lot of time. My cornering isn’t so smooth and so there was a lot of toing and throwing between the technical sections and the one or two straights.
The bike course was three kilometres long and required six laps to make up the distance. This is quite a big number to count and many people did seven.
The run was four laps, mostly consisting of the cycle circuit with a few short grass sections. All of my prep has been long distance and I did not want to push too hard so I was pretty pleased with my time. There was an aid station on the final three laps so I was able to cool myself down with the some water (once I had worked out which was the High5 and which was the water!).
My official time was:
1:11:00
That said, the official times are wrong. There seems to be a minute missing off the run: having compared with four other competitors we all have a mystery one-minute deduction on our run leg. Below, I’ve included the official timings and my watch timings. Given I have only ever gone sub-20 once over 5k, and it seems unlikely I would do this in a triathlon, especially one where I wasn’t trying to PB, I am included to believe my watch.
| Section | Official time | Watch time |
|---|---|---|
| Swim | 8:33 | 8:32 |
| T1 | 1:09 | 1:18 |
| Bike | 39:46 | 39:29 |
| T2 | 1:25 | 1:34 |
| Run | 20:07 | 21:02 |
Dan took a well-earned title of first Harrier home finishing 55 seconds faster. His new faster swim, combined with some solid bike handling skills, gave him an unailable lead going onto the run,
I did not splash out for the official photos ass they were £10 for one or £39 for the bundle.
Would I recommend it as a first triathlon? I would like more toilets, accurate timings and reasonably-priced photos. But it was well organised and, while technical, the bike course was car-free which would make it attractive for beginners.
Anxiety Leeds is closing. Since 2013, we’ve had thousands of people attend our support groups at the Leeds General Infirmary, supporting each other practically and emotionally. We hope that everyone who has come through our doors found some support from doing so.
Since the pandemic, we have been unable to hold face-to-face meetings. With myself and Chris having to step away from the organisation for personal reasons, we now do not have a venue, facilitators, or capacity to train new volunteers, and therefore it makes sense to close the group and allow others to take our place.
In terms of where you should go for support:
If you would like to access resources yourself and find out more about what is available in Leeds, MindWell remains the best place to visit.
In addition, you can access support at Linking Leeds. They provide Wellbeing Coordinators who can review your situation and help you access the most appropriate support.
I would like to extend a personal thank you to everyone who has attended, volunteered with, fundraised for, or otherwise been involved in Anxiety Leeds over the past nine years.
I did Castle Howard standard distance back in 2019. This year, I was taking in the middle-distance version known as The Gauntlet.
They run a huge range of events which means races starting at different times and a rush to get bikes out of transition to make space for future races. Doing the longest race of the day made this easier: we arrived before everyone else, had reserved racking all day, and the roads were back open by the time we left.
The lake at Castle Howard is not deep. It is filled with mud and plant life. It really makes you appreciate how nice Waterloo Lake at Roundhay Park is. More annoyingly, the swim cap would not stay on my head. I had to stop several times on the first lap to try and pull it back on my head and re-arrange my goggles. This left me at the back with all the swimmers who keep switching to breaststroke causing a domino effect as everyone behind them also switches to breaststroke.
After a lap of wrestling with the swim cap, I stood up in the deep mud and pulled my goggles under my swim cap. This left me a good 50 metres off the back of the field but by the 100m buoy, I was back on their feet and going past them. As we rounded the top buoys I found myself sitting on three people’s feet with two other swimmers to each side of me, boxing me in. I zig-zagged trying to find a way past but they were swimming in perfect synchronisation. In the end, I dropped right off and went around the left side.
At this point, my swim cap went sailing away. This meant all of the water filled my hair which made me surprisingly less aero. I headed for the final buoy while the rest of the swim pack incorrectly headed back towards the start despite the many warnings during the pre-race brief that they should head straight for the final buoy.
Lacking my swim cap, I came out looking like the creature from the Black Lagoon.
The bike course starts off on The Stray and I headed down the hill carefully avoiding any comfort breaking. Then a gust of wind blew a leaf into my arm and almost gave me a papercut. That sums up long format racing: one minute you are on top of the world, the next you are close to crying because you’ve been beaten up by a particularly aggressive leaf.
The course then goes out into the Howardian Hills. And they are hills. There are over 1,000 metres of climbing over the 90k which is about the same climbing as the full course at IRONMAN Copenhagen. Climbing really gets to my back when I’m putting out any kind of power so I spent most of the bike course with a lot of lower back pain. Thankfully, the second half of the course flattens out slightly and I could get down on my aero bars a little more.
The run course also starts with a lovely downhill. My stomach hadn’t really settled all day and I was feeling sick by this point so I reminded myself that I was here to get the distance in and have fun. The course is entirely inside the castle grounds and is all off-road making it very scenic but difficult to get a good footing. There are only two real fills but it does go up and down a fair bit.
The weather was a weird mix of warm with a bit of rain occasionally. To cool me down, I took two cups of water at each aid station: one to drink and one to douse myself in. This worked well for the first two aid stations but on the third, I got the tables mixed up and managed to pour isotonic all over myself.
I went through the first lap in 55 minutes but made a decision to back off a little and under fuel to keep my stomach a little happier. I gave a “well done, keep going” to everyone I went passed but there wasn’t any chatting as everyone was hurting by this point. I pushed a little at the end to ensure my half marathon time was uncomfortably under two hours.
Post-race we got a massage and a chicken salad (both included in the entry fee), and I also ran into Jack and Kirsten who were running the yoga tent. After I went into the food tent, the heavens truly opened. Nice timing for me although everything in transition, including my towel, ended up soaked.
I finished in:
6:23:53
Good enough for 76 out of 135. Here are my splits:
| Section | Time | 2019 |
|---|---|---|
| Swim | 43:07 | 41:59 |
| T1 | 7:02 | 4:12 |
| Bike | 3:34:28 | 1:58:51 |
| T2 | 4:34 | 2:20 |
| Run | 1:54:39 | 58:41 |
I’ve included my 2019 times for comparison even though that was a standard distance. I’m pleased with the swim time was I was almost as fast as 2019 despite doing 400 metres more, and having to fiddle with my goggles and swim cap. My bike was 10 minutes quicker per lap and my run laps were faster, too.
Not quite Outlaw X but pretty much what I expected: a hillier bike course makes for a slower time. It had a similar course profile to Weymouth but I was a good 20 minutes faster despite a longer swim here.
This was my 50th triathlon. Does anyone know where I get my t-shirt?
My new book is out! It is aimed at people who are looking to do their first ever triathlon and answers over 50 of the most common questions. It also includes swim, bike and run workouts, and 12-week training plans for both sprint and standard distances.
Exclusively available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle format, ISBN-13: 979-8840393970.
Manvers Lake swimrun is an event organised by As Keen As Mustard that takes place in Rotheram (at Manvers Lake, as you can probably guess). It’s a swimrun so consists of multiple stages of running and swimming with no transitions: you wear the same thing for the whole event.
This event is very beginner-friendly: they offer a 5k and 10k options that are 80% running and 20% swimming. Compare that to Breca Loch Lomond where the “sprint” features 6k of swimming and 15k of running. Unlike Love SwimRun Llanberis, the run at Manvers Lake is flat (pretty much) and the water is a lot warmer than 14 degrees!
It also has a lot more sections. While Llanberis had an 8k run up a quarry and two swims of over a kilometre, Manvers Lake’s longest run section was 2k and the longest swim was 320 metres. To make up the distance, the course featured 13 run sections and 12 swim sections.
It was over 20 degrees air temperature on the day so plenty warm enough not to be in a wetsuit. Most of us opted for it anyway to help with our swim. They used ankle tags rather than bibs which made it much easier to zip down the front of my wetsuit while running. Flooding the suit before the end of the swim helped a lot as well.
My main aim was to have fun so I took it steady. People generally overtook me on the swim sections but the 2k run section at the end of the park was a good chance to take some places back. In fact, I frequently saw the same faces as we traded places between the swim and the run.
The course was a two-lap affair with an aid station on the second lap so I stopped to get a drink. It was “bring your own cup”, which I had stashed in my wetsuit back pocket along with a Mars bars and an energy gel. But no phone: yes, I a millennial, survived two hours without my phone.
I did overtake at least one person on the swim as I put in a push to finish the final swim strongly.
Manvers Lake is not my favourite lake. It was murky, like the Blue Lagoon, except that some parts were extra muddy so it was like a blackout when you put your face in the water.
Other parts of the lake were clear and you could see all of the weeds. These were not too bad except for the final swim section of each lap where you were grabbing and kicking handfuls of the stuff even more so than at Ripon race course.
My total time was:
1:50:28.8
Good enough for 34 out of 56 athletes. I’m happy with that as swimming is not a strong discipline for me and I don’t have a perfect swim setup: no pull buoy, hand paddles, and I even bypassed my calf sleeves because it was so warm. So, to still end up mid-pack feels pretty hood.
The event was well organised and a great beginner event. It felt like less of an adventure than Llanberis as it did not have the wilderness or beautiful scenary, but that is ideal for someone new to swimrun.
Elina and I spent a few days down in Penzance. It was a chance for a little getaway while Venla had a sleepover at the grandparents, albeit one where I went racing in the middle. It is a long drive but luckily we avoided any queues so we made it down there and back in about eight hours each way.
The weather was nice, too. We spent the first day on Porthminster Beach and did some standup paddleboarding and sea swimming. The lifeguards said the water was 13 degrees but it was a very warm 13: I was a little cold when I started swimming but warmed up within a few minutes. The water was super clear and I could see all of the crabs scuttling about below. It made the bottom look really close which was unnerving when paddleboarding, but it was much deeper than it seemed.
Day two was Man Vs Coast.
Day three started with us going back to the beach. The wind was stronger today and I struggled to get stood up on the paddleboard, but it was still fun. After that, we headed over to the Cornish Seal Sanctuary to see some seals, sea lions, penguins and goats.
Round Sheffield Run is a multi-stage trail race that starts and ends in Endcliffe Park, Sheffield. It is a stage race in that there is 20k of timed stages with another 4k or so of walking in between. It’s Sheffield, so it was pretty hilly. I finished in:
01:46:38
Happy with that. The course was busy, especially on the single-track sections, so there was a lot of getting stuck behind people. It also made it difficult to see upcoming roots and quite a few people took a tumble. The feed stations has bananas and jelly babies. I’m not sure I would do the event again, but it was okay. I think they missed me on the race photos. Or maybe just decided I’m not photogenic enough, lol.