Skerries is a popular triathlon that takes place up the coast. We organised a relay team for the club consisting of Chris L swimming, Hugh cycling and myself running. I’ve never done a traditional relay before so I was excited to give it a go.
The biggest pain was that registration closed at 7:15 in the morning. I’m sure lots of races start this early and I’ve just forgotten, but I did not appreciate the 5 am alarm to meet Chris at 6:00. Still, all was well and we got down to the race in plenty of time. At which point there was not a lot to do because we had very little to set up in transition.
The swim starts off down the beach and goes out in the bay and then along the coast to Red Island where transition was located. Despite not having raced a sea swim before, Chris was one of the first out of the water from wave two, which is where all the relay swimmers were placed. He was so fast he almost took us by surprise. The way it works in relay is you have a transition pen where you hand over the timing chip ankle bracelet.
Hugh theen set off on the bike. There was a strong headwind going out meaning that the athletes on the time trial bikes had a big advantage. Despite this, we think Hugh was around 11th fastest overall on his road bike. I was nervously waiting in the pen at this point. And I was nervous. We were in the lead and I did not want to blow it, but I also knew how much it was going to hurt. I got a proper warm-up in and then did some pacing while we waited.
My turn on the run. It was a wierd experience. Usually, I have come out of the swim near the back and spend the entire run overtaking people. But today I was out with some of the faster athletes and while I still managed plenty of overtakes, there were also some people that came flying past me.
At this point, I did not know what gap we had on the team in second place. I thought I knew what their runner looked like but wasn’t sure if maybe I had missed him. Maybe they were only five minutes behind and he was an 18-minute 5k guy. The run course is a beautiful out and back along the beach and as I came to around the 3.5/4k point, I saw the second place team’s runner heading out on the run. At this point, I knew we had it in the bag! Cue a classic finish line celebration.
Some may try to diminish our victory by saying that there were only five relay teams in total and that everyone else was just there for the craic. But having never won anything in triathlon before, I’m chuffed to bits. You can only beat who turns up on the day. It was a well organised race at every point so a big thank you to Fingal Triathlon Club for organising.
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Tags: triathlon
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