First time I have done the Sprint race at Knockburn. In previous year's it has been held on the same day as the Standard race that I normally do. This year they have been split to different dates to simplify the Scottish Championship Standard race in August. That will be my last race before Aberfeldy.
I purposefully set up to treat this as a practice run for the Standard race, which in turn I will be using as a practice run for Aberfeldy. This meant setting up my transitions for a Half Ironman rather than a sprint.
The water was ridiculously warm. 17 degrees according to the chart on the wall. We were all in the water about 5 minutes before the start. I took a spot way out to the left but near to the front. I was hoping to get a clean line by staying out wide, but instead I got squeezed right up against the bank. I got caught up in the washing machine of arms and legs down to and round the first two turns. Despite swimming almost a water-polo stroke to see where the melee was and trying to avoid the punching I still got a lot more than I wanted. Along with a couple of mouthfuls of water that I could have done without.
Once we got out onto the back straight I decided that the drafting effect I was getting from being in the pack wasn't worth all the fighting so I took a really wide line and went maybe 4 or 5 meters out to the left of the pack. Having the clean water to play in made a huge difference and I was overtaking whole groups from there.
Managed to get back onto the feet of the group I should have been with all along. Within 20-30 seconds of the guys that I really want to be racing with. In a longer or cleaner race I fancy my chances at being out of the water at the front of that group rather than the back. Out of the water and in transition in 13:57.
I had a total faff in transition. Decided to skip the socks from my Half Ironman kit (wrong choice, see later) but went for everything else including the cycling jacket. Could have done without the sunglasses as they fogged up straight away and I had to take them off again before I was out of the gates.
Decent mount onto the bike on the move. I really can't understand why so few people practice that bit. Always pass someone standing still trying to get onto their bike.
The new bike is definitely quicker. Not as massively as I had hoped but on the flat and the downhill I was making places. On the uphill sections I was dropping odd places but only to nice bikes. Everyone that passed me was riding carbon, most of them with carbon aero wheels. This is a definite step change from riding my alloy bike where I have been known to lose places even to alloy touring bikes.
Few minor issues on the bike that still need work. Shoulders struggle after more than a few minutes on the tri-bars, so position probably still needs a bit more work. Aero helmet needs to be fitted better. It wants to be slightly too far forward so it is cutting a slice out of my forwards vision. And finally I hit a pothole or a rock at about the 9 mile mark and there was a huge bang from the front wheel. Thought I had popped the tyre or maybe even cracked the carbon. Looks ok afterwards but sounded expensive at the time.
Not having the socks on for the bike was the wrong decision. It didn't affect the bike but when I got to transition I had frozen toes and couldn't feel the front half of my feet. This made getting into my running shoes a lot harder than it needed to be. Then the whole of the first lap of he run I was struggling to feel my feet so was doing a bit of a shuffle. Second lap was better
I was having problems with heartburn and a sore throat on the ride. I thought at the time that it was just from trying to breathe a few mouthfuls of the loch water. With a couple of days hindsight it was probably early stages of the manflu I have had the rest of the week. Can't tell if it was affecting my performance though.
Overall, I beat all the female racers, which I think is a first for me in a triathlon, and I was first ThreePeak-er, that is not technically a first but it might be a first in a race where there were more than 2 of us. In the bigger picture, I am still about 2-3 minutes total down on the people that I really feel I should be racing with. I am down to just losing that time in dribs and drabs against the generalists or single chunks against specialists. The swim specialist I want to be racing was out of the water with a 3:30 lead on me, but then there were seconds between us on the bike and swim. The generalists were sneaking 30 seconds each leg on me, (including transitions gave them 5 shots of 30 secs each). this is definitely an improvement on previous years where I would lose ground to the specialists in their non-specialist events as well.
Once upon a time I would have listed myself as a specialist runner, but at the minute my running form simply isn't good enough. If I can sort that out it will make me a minute over 5k easily, maybe even two on a course that suits my style. I also know I can transition much better than the untidy ones I did this time round. Then I will be down to looking for small handfuls of seconds each on the swim and bike to put me right into the group I want to be beating.
