dorney triathlon
Is that the time? 02.38 and there’s precious little chance of any kip.
Perhaps caused by having a few swift pints with the boys to calm the nerves, maybe brought on by a last minute carbo loading session of industrial sized quantities of pasta and garlic bread or simply the burning knot of fear in the pit of my stomach together with the recurring vision of being ‘swam-over’ and deposited at the bottom of the lake. Yep, that’ll be it then.
Sunday morning saw your favourite gang of intrepid adventurers, Stu Hart, Jonathan ‘the butcher’ Greaves and little ol’ me, embark on the next chapter of physical pain and heart-break by attempting the ORCA Sprint Triathlon at Eton’s Dorney rowing complex incorporating a 760m open-water swim, 20k cycle and 5k run. Not huge distances I admit but with over 300 competitors in a mass start, certainly not an event to taken lightly.
I can confirm that when I left the house at 5.40am it was both pitch black and bl**dy freezing and some two hours later in the lake it was a little lighter but no less warm. And not content with putting us in a 14 degree lake, the organisers then decide to keep us in for 15 minutes before starting the actual race. Treading water (it will come as no surprise that I wasn’t able to touch the bottom!) for this length of time getting colder and colder…and more and more nervous is just how I wanted to start. Not.
Eventually the hooter sounds and off we go into the bedlam that an overly competitive testosterone fuelled open water swim truly represents. And they were just the well-mannered ones! Now, I can now swim, I can, honestly…it’s just that I can’t swim in a straight line…or see where I’m swimming to…or have any perception of distance vs effort. Which in short means I go off line and swim across people and get myself out of bounds on two occasions and all confused into the bargain. B*gger. Anyway, it’s over (surprisingly) quickly and into transition for the bike ride. Here we all realise (as amazingly we’ve all got out of the water at roughly the same time) that it’s for a good reason that transition is referred to as the fourth discipline and it’s (apparently) where races are won and lost. If that really is the case then it’s where Stu and Jonathan won and I…er…lost! The two of them were out in a flash whereas I was staggering around feeling sorry for myself at being unable to get out of the wetsuit (even with Stu’s help) and then into the cycling gear. An invaluable five or six minutes were lost and they were not to be recovered.
Stu and Jonathan eventually romped home in a highly credible 1.19 with Jonathan taking the first place accolade by 20 seconds, whilst I limped home in an OK-ish 1.27. Not bad for a first timer but there’s ten minutes in there to be found next time. Cheers to our supporters Mel, Katherine and Ian and did you really not have something better to do with your Sunday morning? And you think we’re sad!
