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Mumbles Triathlon 2011

Oh what a miserable start to a June Saturday. We sat in our cars waiting out the latest heavy rain shower wondering if we were really going to have to get out and race in this horrible weather.

Of course we would. The weather forecast showed the showers mostly holding off for the rest of the morning anyway, and by the time we'd racked and wetsuited up (largely to stay warm) it hadn't so much as "brightened up" as much as the very dark clouds had just become a little less dark and menacing.

I had another cracking swim, tacking a more direct line than those around me thanks to picking out some good sighting marks on the shoreline, and picking and changing good feet. I came into the ramp below Verdi's cafe (what a great spot to have a triathlon) only a little off the back of the front pack, which is great for me.

The run through transition was really sharp and rough tarmac but my feet were nice and numb after the swim so I didn't feel a thing. Racking was a bit tight so I made sure to lob my wetsuit under the bar and out of the way. The racking wasn't evenly set up either, and racking in the wrong spot would have made for a longer transition run than I had (it's worth checking these things out early y'know). The bike mount line was "anywhere after the timing mat" at the T1 exit, so I chose to run all the way out to the road, missing the little incline and the potentially dodgy junction and had a clean run, mount and escape.

The bike course is nice and hilly, and the bike splits last year had been rather long, I'd noticed on the interweb a couple of days before. These roads are all in my back yard but I'd never ridden this loop all together in one go. The plan was to tick off each little hill and hit the next one a little harder than the last, paying attention to the wind that was going to be blowing into our faces going back past the airport. The hills felt great, but the 1:4 climb up to Lunnon from the Three Cliffs Bay bit was a really jelly leg fight over the top. I had to force my legs to keep pushing as it flattened out a little. I'd made up a number of places to that point and caught sight of the fella in 2nd place just as I went to jelly. I figured his legs had done the same by the way the gap had closed.

After that the gap remained and as we hit faster stretches the spatial gap widened even if the temporal gap remained similar. My buddy Ed was marshalling at the Upper Killay turn and confirmed that I was in 3rd. I hammered hard back towards the sea, then the downhill back to the Mumbles was flat out, dropped aero and slippery wet, hard, hard braking for the roundabout (poor bastards on carbon rims today must be having a horror here) and back to T2.

Fast through T2 I saw a first year medical student that I teach, Andrew Loftus. It was his entry to the race that made me enter. Out of T2 hurt big style, and I pushed to focus on good, tall technique, caught and passed Andrew with a slap on the back (I probably couldn't speak by that point) and pushed, pushed, pushed out around the bay beside the sea. This was a path I used to run daily. Its very nice. Not many people in the way at 8am on a Sunday either.

Everything had softened up a bit by the 1.25km turnaround point for the short sprint distance race, and there were only three of us continuing on the stretch out to the 2.5km turnaround marker and the lonely marshal. The gaps looked ok. I thought I was gaining on 2nd place.

On the way back I saw lots of Cardiff Tri lycra and just about managed a waggly thumbs up. Lots of pain. This was our chosen club championships event so I was pulling the stops out here. There was a fair gap to 4th place though so I was pretty comfy there, but I wanted to try and pull back 2nd. Pain, pain and more pain. That 5km at the end of a sprint triathlon is fast and short. Ow. My running still needs a lot of improvement.

I was very glad to see Verdi's again, and rounded the cafe to hit the finish line with a massive smile. Very happy with 3rd overall. I clapped a bunch of people home, jogged to the car to get warm clothes on, and saw Stu MacCormac running in. Great to see Stu racing. It was a great morning generally, and it was brilliant to have so many Cardiff Triathletes over to Swansea to race. I just wish the weather could have been better, but hey, it was fairly representative of the Swansea climate.

Cardiff Tri picked up a bunch of prizes, as you can see. I'm looking forward to picking up my Club Champs trophy this weekend when we meet again at the Pembrokeshire triathlon in Broad Haven.

Cycling home

I got a couple of Flip video cameras, so thought I'd test them out by cycling home & filming it. They're nice and simple, and work well!

Gower Sprint Triathlon 2010

So this has been a challenging weekend so far. I'm not sure what the lesson is but it's in there.

I invited a mate and his family to come and stay with us and to enter today's Gower Triathlon. Garry and I used to bike race together when we were half our current ages and now we have somehow both drifted towards triathlon. I thought it might be a good battle as I guessed my swim would be better than his, his bike leg would be faster than mine and who knows what would happen then in the run?

I took him round the bike course yesterday and we had a swim in Port Eynon while the families played on the beach (we did too a little!) The weather ended up being a lot better than expected and I seemed to collect most of the sun on my head. Normally I have a cap with me, but I thought it was going to be rainy, not sunny. Later in the evening a stonking headache began, and when I looked in the mirror I realised that the cause was a red face, rather than a resurgence of the mild fever I had earlier in the week. I'd fried my brain.

Trying to get an early night and a good sleep before the 5am start paracetamol dulled the pain but I got little sleep and was up all night peeing. But not drinking anything. That can't be good. At 5am I felt no better but drove to the race with Garry and a wet flannel on my head drinking as much as I could keep in my stomach to try and rehydrate. I didn't think I'd start the race.

Registered, kit together, transition sorted, wetsuit half on and it was clear I was going to at least get in the water. Maybe the cold water would help. My wetsuit fits poorly and the cold water flowing down my neck probably alleviated my symptoms. What the hell, race on.

It was great to bump in to some of the club guys on the beach & I found one of my students (Alistair) - a good swimmer. I'd like to hold his feet in the swim. The race eventually started & I just hammered the swim, got some draft, was pretty straight to the buoys & came out right next to Alistair. Excellent. Good swim.

I've been poor at running to transition but ran faster today up the beach, feeling ok. Hammering the bike up the hill out of Port Eynon I picked up most of the places ahead of me, another before the climb, another on the climb and then belted the rest of the bike course on my own. Lots of rain to keep my poor head cool and a course I knew really well. Lovely. I took the descent back down to the beach a lot faster than I'd expected too so I must have been having fun. Another good effort.

Off the bike, out onto the beach for the run and I was clear behind and ahead. I had a big gap to pick up so I pushed hard for the first lap through soft sand, shallow dunes, huge muddy puddles and boardwalks. At the turn to lap 2 it was clear I wasn't catching and no-one was catching me so I kept up a decent effort but took safer lines after nearly turning my ankle on a couple of hidden holes. Finish safe. I knew I was in 3rd or 4th place.

There was a good crowd at the finish and a nice finishing chute so I enjoyed that. As I was recovering Garry finished, way too close to me for comfort. Fit boy! Shortly after him Cardiff Tri jerseys started appearing, plus more students and friends. Great!

Waiting around for the prize giving my headache and sore neck started to reform & I started to feel like crap again. I don't understand how I was able to race at that intensity feeling that bad before and after. Maybe it was the cold water. I still don't feel any better now, writing this.

Officially 4th, Richard Jones was kind enough to stand aside for me to be awarded 3rd (open category age group) on account of him being an awesome ex-international triathlete. Thanks, Rich. A nice bit of glory for me, my face in the paper and a nice prize.

And my name next to Richard Jones' on the results sheet. Just don't look at the time difference.

Megan's Big Swim

One of our first year medicine students at Swansea is attempting to swim the English Channel next week. As you do. (These students are nuts for doing things that are ridiculously hard).

Go see how Megan is getting on at her blog: megansbigswim.wordpress.com. While you're there, click on her "Sponsor me" link and give some money to Oxfam.

Good luck Megan!

Sea fishing

Looks like the remains of a torture scene, doesn't it? I had a bit of an accident with a hook. I got a treble from a large plug embedded deep in my finger, up to the bend, and the barb had grabbed the flesh rather tightly. It came out of my finger eventually after much twiddling, twisting, pulling, pushing, tweaking and more pulling with a pair of rusty pliers. After about 10 minutes of leaking blood all over the place I was planning to cut it out but it didn't quite come to that.

I did catch a small, very pretty wrasse shortly after all that.

On the beach

Fishing by the sea.

Thinking?

Port Eynon

Brave boy. He insisted on going swimming in the sea, but when we got in there we jumped over the waves and didn't quite get swimming. The sun needs to get a bit hotter yet.

Google Maps.

Summer?

Summer's here! (?)

Fishing?

Looking for crabs in the surf.

Hunting for rockpools. Next time I'll have to take a crab line and see what we can catch.

Sun

It's been a tough week this week, so I'm posting these sunny images from the beach (from a recent weekend) to show an update and to cheer myself up. The sun is coming back!

Caswell Sand

I'm a lazy blogger. Stu and Lisa came to visit in the first weekend of February and we popped down to a beach in the good weather. Jack's firefighting imagination came with him and we built piles of sand (fires) which he put out with buckets of water. It all worked rather well, as the sandy pile got washed away bit by bit until the fire was out.

December Sun

We popped down to Caswell Bay today, as we've had the first day of blue sky in weeks. I took my camera:

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

Sunny Weekends

I didn't blog on the weekend, probably because I finally fixed my gaming PC. I'd like to point out that my watercooling rig didn't actually cause any damage. Sure, the radiator leaked, but the graphic card was the only thing that got dripped on, and it survived. The damage was caused by me swapping bits around PCs, and prioritising the home theatre PC over the gaming PC (who'd have guessed - TV over games?) The motherboard was dying (not my fault) and I burnt out a CPU because the huge copper heatsink I placed on it wasn't actually completely flush. I checked it twice, but didn't find out until I smelled roasting silicon. It must have been microns out on one edge, the heatsink held up by some large capacitors.

Radiator replaced, new motherboard, new CPU (all cheap replacement parts), and I completed F.E.A.R. over the weekend, patched and scored a few points on Battlefield 2, and downloaded Half-Life 2 Episode 1. Battlefield 2 is getting harder to score in, as Jack now insists we drive around jeeps all the time. A very minor upgrade seems to have improved some of the gaming frame rates anyway.

Photos from the weekend:

A windy Swansea Bay.

How cool are those shorts?

After the Rain Has Gone

The best thing about going to the beach when it's raining? You have the place to yourself.