I conquered the island…
Island races middle distance triathlon.
The swim conditions were perfect…pan flat with just a little bit of chop once out in the channel. This is only the second islander race and so from a competitors perspective there are a few improvements they can make. First being the buoys… Really hard to sight them they just weren’t big enough with it being one loop. Especially the last buoy… Tiny round one with a little flag on it that despite regular sighting I just couldn’t see…I think hence why I ended up doing an extra 200meters!
The bike was fast and consisted of out and back with 4 loops around the resevoir. I had fun on this and got down on my Tri bars lots…. It was lovely to see Zoe and Chris Mcbeth whooping and shooting on the course! ☺️
Came in from the bike and smashed my sub 3:30 goal so made up some time from my extra swim 😂
Now for the run….oh my…. First 2km on the beach in sand with a wicked camber… Calves were on fire but jogged/walked it trying to get my HR down (fail) whilst taking on some food. Then a small section of about 500m on the road and onto the sea wall… Now this wasnt a wall as such just a raised lump between the sea and the fields with very uneven ground and knee high grass for about 10km….I managed to keep some sort of run pace for the majority of this but couldn’t hit the pace on my race plan I knew at this point my run time wasn’t going to be what I’d hoped for…. The second half consisted of more of this terrain with a good few beach sections just to kill the legs some more. Second half was a run/walk tactic as that’s all I could manage! Most of this there was zero support as well… Just you and the rough path which made it mentally tough too. I finally made it to the finish though….. I’ve never been so happy to see a finish line ever!!!
All finishers got a medal which doubles up as a bottle opener, a bottle of ghost ship ale 0% and a mersea Oyster!
So I popped my Oyster cherry! Would have been rude not to 😉
