Newbury Triathlon

I arrived at the Race HQ with plenty of time and after registering I went through and racked my bike. My nerves weren’t helped by the fact that I was surrounded by men as I was race No5 (nearest lady no15)… all experienced tri racers and one guy in particular thought it was very amusing to patronised me on being a first timer… I was incredible nervous about being overtaken on the bikes and it would just be me pottering round the course at the back on my own…

Anyway to the start of the swim… 300yds or 4 lengths of the 75yds pool… jumped in to start and boy it was cold… took me the entire swim to catch my breath. My brother started 30seconds behind me and I had this underlying fear that he would catch me before the end… but I finished the swim in 4:31 and was out of the pool before him.

Off to transition – the cold water had really got to me and a very dizzy transition later I ran out with my bike alongside my brother (great photo opportunity!!)… straight up a hill, round some steep bends and out onto the open road for the 22k loop. My brother had driven me round the course beforehand which I found a huge help as he had pointed out sections of the road to be wary of, when to pick up speed downhill for following uphill etc… so I just went for it! As predicted the 5 guys behind me overtook me, but I did actually overtake a couple of others which cheered me up immensely and it wasn’t so bad. The bike section is my weakest part but I came in a smiling 46mins (49:02 including transitions) having picked up speeds much faster than I had reached in training…

Back to transition – dumped bike, got my trainers on with a little struggle and back out. Remembered all the advice from on here about little steps etc and just went from there. The run was lovely, along little tracks and down along the canal, I finally got my legs back with about a mile to go and picked off a few competitors along the way (shouting encouragement as I went!) completed the 5k in 19:35.

My total time was 1:13:08, which made me…

1st Female Novice (for which I got a cup); 7th Female Open and 8th Lady overall… not bad for a Sunday out!
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