So where do I start, I was meticulous in my prep for racking my bike, stickers on helmet, bag, bike and really raring to go to get everything set up. I was racking my bike at 6am jumping around to get everything in place. As this was the first race of the year that was a wetsuit swim I was keen to be prepared and have all my stuff nicely lined up so I could concentrate on the wetsuit when I came into transition. By 6:30 I was all racked, stuff in place and ready to go down for the race brief! I’ll be honest as the race brief started and with British triathlon officials all over the place I was starting to get a bit nervous. After the race brief we were told to get in the water. If I was honest I was expecting it to be a bit colder than it was. I was pleasantly surprised.
Now positioning, I always find this a hard one! There must have been a couple of 100 people in my age group all setting off together in a mass start! I thought I’d start pretty close to the front and see how I get on. In hindsight this was a pretty daft idea! I got punched, kicked, dunked the lot. I thought I was in a boxing match, not a swim. Found it really hard to get any kind of rhythm and really struggled. I managed the swim in 28:50. Not great but equally not a disaster!
Then onto the bike, I was aiming for 210 to 230 watt range for this and had in my head that would be around a 1:05 40k bike split. To be honest I felt very similar to the bike I did in the sprint race a month ago. I never really had the legs and felt a little sluggish. I cant really complain, I averaged 189w and 192 normalised power. And that resulted in a 1:12:19 bike split and 20.7mph. My fastest bike in a triathlon of around this distance.
Onto the run, I didn’t feel too bad, My aim was to start at 9 min mile and hold it to a 55 min 10k. I quickly released this would result in me blowing up so I backed off slightly and averaged 9:29 per mile for the 10k resulting a 58:12 run split. My fastest 10k in a triathlon!
So overall I cant really complain, I was hoping for big things and big improvements which didn’t happen but progress is progress and I’ll take it with my first 70.3 of the year 2 weeks away!
-Mike Catton Mike is training for some triathlons and Half Ironman in 2019. Check in next Monday for his next article about his training journey.
Check out last weeks article here
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http://www.coachray.nz/category/client-stories/mikes-middle-distance-magic/