Posts Tagged ‘triathlon’

I completed Kilkenny Triathlon two years ago when the swim was cancelled due to water quality. That meant the last open water race I had finished was IRONMAN Copenhagen three years ago and my confidence was not in good shape coming into this race. I registered for the try a tri as it is the same course as the sprint but with a shorter swim.

I got down there and registered fine. Despite the cloud cover it was baking hot, especially once we had our wetsuits on. We walked down to the swim and I felt nervous, especially when getting into the water. But I did it, and despite plenty of in-water nerves, too, I finished the swim.

The bike was pretty standard. Some back ache towards the end but I generally just had fun. I don’t think I used my aero bars much.

The run course was different to previous years. Last time it followed a similar route to the parkrun course with two laps around the castle grounds. This course took us onto the side of the river behind the castle and then back along the river in a lovely one-lap circuit.

My overall time was:

1:23:46

In 2023 it took on a duathlon format with an additional run at the start I cannot compare the two. Slightly slower on the cycle an slightly faster on the run, though it was probably a little flatter. My T1 looks horrendous but the mat was at the bottom of the hill by the river and included a long run up to transition.

I’m not fuss about the times in any case, I just wanted to finish a triathlon with an open water swim again and I did that so job done. I’m proud of myself. Also, it was fun!

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.

TriLaois is a sprint distance triathlon that takes place in Portlaoise. 750m pool swim, 23km cycle and 5km run. It’s been 20 months since I last did a triathlon and I was super-excited for it.

Still had some stomach issues on the morning but once I was racking my bike in transition it was nothing but excitement. We had nine athletes from the club racing and there are not many greater joys in life than racing with your teammates.

Transition closed at 8:10 and our wave was not scheduled until 10:30. This meant we had the chance to watch some of our teammates in wave one, but then left quite a gap between wave one finishing the swim and us getting in the pool. The bag drop was not secure but it did mean we could keep our hoodies on until the last minute.

The swim

We had a lane to ourselves in wave five. Six people in a lane sounded like a lot but Sarah, Roxane and Grace swam as a pack reducing the number of groups moving around. Melchior was quickest out of the water. I had two bursts of speed where I briefly tried to stay on the girls’ feet but otherwise took it easy.

The cycle

Transition was on an astroturf field which meant our feet got covered in those little rubber balls. I went for socks but otherwise there was no messing around and I was out in two and a half minutes.

The cycle route was an out-and-back and pretty flat. There was tailwind going out and it was slightly downhill which meant coming back was much harder. Even though there was nothing to take me out of my big ring, 3% into a headwind is enough to slow you down. I managed to catch my team mates on the outward leg. I was just under 30 kph average speed.

Annoyingly, neither my heart rate monitor nor my power meter had synced with my bike computer so I had to work on feel. The power meter did sync with my watch, though, and thinks I averagd 189 watts.

The run

Transition two was smooth enough as I switched to my running shoes and set off on the run. I tried not to hurt myself too hard. That’s tough as soon as you see someone ahead of you, though, and it was a constant battle of trying to slow myself down. Thankfully, there was an aid station half way to get some water over my head.

I wrote my tri suit which does not have any pockets so I had to do the run without my phone. As a result, by the half way point, I was two and a half kilometres away from my phone. As someone who doesn’t usually go to the bathroom without my phone, I think that might be a new personal best.

The results

My total time was:

1:30:10

And my splits were:

All good stuff. 2:16 per 100 is good enough swim pace for me, the cycle was faster than expected as I thought about 45 minutes for 20km and the speedy run was a nice bonus, too. Most of all, I had fun, which was the aim of the day.

We took a team of nine of us and everyone did brilliant, especially considering most people were doing their first triathlon.

Well done to Finn Meenagh and Christine O’Brien for being the first DUCCers across the line, and Christopher Lohse for winning his age group. Alas, the competition of the M35-39 age group made for a tough race.

Post race celebrations

After the race, we headed to The Pantry Cafe & Walled Garden for some refreshments and banter.

On Friday, we staged our first Mini Triathlon. It consisted of a 400-metre swim in the pool, a 10 km cycle in the spin studio and a 2 km run around campus. It was a lot to organise but well worth it. Eight athletes took part and apart from having to invalidate the bike results due to a misconfiguration, everything went smoothly. We can’t wait to run some more events like this next year.

Back in May, Jonas Deichmann set out to try and complete 120 long-format triathlons in a row. Last week, he finished it. This surpasses Sean Conway’s previous record of 105. Congratulations, Jonas!

Lots of exciting thing happened at Challenge Roth this year.

In the men’s race, Magnus Ditlev set a new men’s course record of 7:23:24. And in British interests, Tom Bishop moving up to long format, came second with 7:37:54. He was actually overtaken by Rudy Von Berg on the run but battled back to regain second place.

In the women’s race, Anna Haug set a new women’s course record of 8:02:38. It was only two years ago that Katt Matthews set the first women’s sub-8 at Sub7 / Sub8 under artificial conditions and now Haug is less than three minutes from doing it in a race. Also, she’s 41!

Further down the field, Jonas Deichmann completed his 60th full distance triathlon in a row to mark the halfway point in Challenge 120. He’s been taking up to 15 hours to complete them, meaning less than a full night’s sleep, and yet incredibly is still banging them out every day as he chases Sean Conway’s record.

In 2015, James Lawrence, also known as the Iron Cowboy, set the world record for number of full distance triathlons completed on consecutive days: 50. In 2021, he raised the bar to 100 and then in 2023, Sean Conway raised the bar to 105.

Last week, Jonas Deichmann kicked off Challenge 120: an attempt to complete 120 full distance triathlons in 120 days. For reference, that is a 3.8 km swim, 180 km cycle and a 42.2 km run (full marathon) each day. You can follow him each day on his live tracker and there are daily updates on Instagram, too.

In 2018, I launched my course Triathlon For Beginners and subsequently set up a Facebook group to facilitate peer support. Six years later and I am pleased to announce the group has now hit 100,000 members.

My Running For Beginners group did the same in January.

I have some battle stories from what spammers will try in a group that size 😆. But it has been wonderful to watch so many people sharing stories, encouragement and support.

Helmsley Open Air Swimming Pool run a triathlon as a fundraiser each year and it has been on my list for a while: a swim in a heated outdoor pool followed by a bike course around the Moors and a multi-terrain run. It did mean getting up at 4:15 am to drive to Helmsley but surely it would be worth it for the views.

The swim

The pool is beautiful. I wouldn’t quite say bath water but it was a perfect temperature once you were swimming. The swim consisted of 32 lengths (800 metres) and I seemed to seed myself just right, with one overtake and one giveaway during the swim. My lane counter was also wonderful encouraging.

I felt a bit overwhelmed at times during the swim. It’s been very disappointing going from multiple-Ironman finisher to lacking confidence in open water again and here I wasn’t even in open water. It was just a pool that happens to be outside. It has been difficult for me to swim this year and it really shows. I was happy enough with my pace, though.

With one DNF and two cancelled swims, this turned out to be my first completed triathlon swim of the year.

The bike

They said the bike course was hilly. But they also posted a screenshot, with no GPX supplied, saying the elevation gain was 323 metres. I took this to mean they were warning anyone coming up from Lincolnshire that Yorkshire was a bit hillier than home.

But the elevation was simply wrong. We took on the Bransdale Loop through the heather of the Moors, which was very beautiful, but also amounted to 732 metres of elevation gain. There were multiple steep climbs with a maximum gradient of 18%. I was running out of food by the end because I did not expect to be out on the bike course for so long.

The views were stunning, though.

The run

The run starts with a four-kilometre climb up the hill we had just cycled down. I went for a run-walk strategy. Once the hill was completed we turned off the road and went onto trail which was practically all down hill. Game birds were hiding in the hedges and would often run out in a panic as we approached.

Most of it was well-signposted and I only got lost at one point after the farm. The answer was to just keep following the bridleway and I eventually discovered I had indeed been going the correct way. There was a final little hill to get back to the pool and then it was a victory lap of the field.

The result

My total time was:

3:27:34

And my splits were:

This put me 32nd out of 46 in the open (men and trans women) category. This year I have been concentrating on ultrarunning and not training for any kind of speed so it is probably a fair result.

A big thank you to all of the volunteers at Helmsley Open Air Swimming Pool that made the race happen.

Even with a leisurely start time, my alarm went off at 06:00. I debated whether to get up. After a hard time at Lough Cutra and a hard time at Metalman, I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to take on Kilkenny. But I also need to get back into the water.

In the end, the swim was cancelled due to water quality anyway. Replaced by a 2.4k run along the same run course we could take on twice after the bike. The first run was easy enough. A lot of people sprinted off and soon realised that had over-paced themselves. Even after T1 the running wasn’t over as the mount line was up a steep grassy hill.

The bike was great. Lots of clear junctions or guards stopping traffic for us. The first half of the course was into a headwind and few other people were using aerobars so even riding at less than 200 Watts I was passing long lines of athletes who were struggling into the wind. Maybe only three stronger cyclists came past me, although I was in the third of three waves.

The second run was also comfortable enough. It is not a flat course but I was just about able to pace myself up the hill. We finished on the top lawn in front of Kilkenny Castle.

My overall time was:

1:20:27

I just scraped into the top half coming 100th out of 212 athletes. Of course, I’m in the M30-39 category, so that only translates to 21 of 34. My splits were:

Pace wise, I was 165th in run 1 and 77th in run 2, so some nice negative splits going on there.