Chicked again! By a 5 measly seconds this time. Thought after beating all the women at Knockburn Sprint that I might get a few races without losing to ladies, but no such luck.
Had some problems before the race. They had a massive amount of people turn up without pre-registering so there was a long queue that was moving really slowly. Wasn't dealing well with the crowd and was getting pretty stressed. Couldn't focus enough to do the breathing exercises so the twitches were going crazy and I was burning a lot of adrenaline and my heart rate was off the scale. Not ideal an hour before race time. Once I finally got signed up I managed to go and sit in a quiet corner for 10 minutes to calm myself down a bit, but I was still carrying a lot of tension in my shoulders and back as I went outside to set up my transition and my heart rate was still the wrong side of 100. Managed to find some friends to hide amongst and continued to relax a bit but was definitely far from my best preparation.
To the race itself:
Swim was pretty terrible. I expected to go about 7 mins. On Monday night during training I did 7:34 in the middle of a training set, going slow-fast-slow-fast lengths, completely by accident. I hate the salt water but that wasn't the main problem, I was just too tired. Having the cold last week and then going into a fairly heavy week while I am still coughing was always a bit ambitious. In the end I was 7:41 for the swim (8:07 including hauling myself out of the water and shuffling to the timing mats). The lanes at Stonehaven are quite wide and the other 6 people in my lane all got away quite quickly so it felt pretty lonely. Despite the huge lanes they made it a no-overtaking swim, and at the end of the second length I had to move over to let two people past. That probably cost me a few seconds, but more importantly it got me out of my rhythm and gave me a chance to taste the water and that made me feel a bit queasy. the real killer was doing too much. My arms were really tiring by the half way point. This is clear on my Garmin swim tracker, the lap splits gradually drop off from 56, 55, 57 (includes being overtaken), 55, 60, 57, 58, 63.
Transition was better than it has been lately. Only had to put on my running shoes, but also took a mouthful of water to rinse out the salt taste.
Felt like it took a while to get into my running. Looking at Garmin track after the race I was going faster than I have done for a few years, with the pace well inside 7 min/mile. Was losing ground to the leading lady for all of the first lap, but was picking off plenty of other places so was happy enough. Onto the second lap I finally started to relax a bit and made back a lot of the ground I had lost to the leading lady. Because of the 5 second start intervals and knowing I started 30 seconds after the first people there was a chance that even if I could close the gap a little I might beat her on time if she had started with the first swim wave. I got the gap back to 25 seconds, but she had started in wave 3 so was still 5 seconds faster overall.
After I finished and got my shoes off I found that the shoes have rubbed through a patch off skin about the size of my thumb. Stings a lot despite the thick coating of Sudocrem I have layered on it. This will mean an enforced sock day for Forres on Saturday as I wont be able to run on it in this condition without them.
The official results have me as 3rd in category (M18+) and fourth overall, but there is at least one name missing off that list so I think I was actually 4th and 5th. If they had cut out Vets into over-40 category as they normally do then I would have been second Senior.
In hindsight I am actually really happy. I can't have any serious complaint about the swim given that it was my third swim of the week, and I hate the salt water. And the run, as much as I was stiff and uncomfortable and it has done a lot of damage to my left foot, it was still the fastest I have gone for years, and didn't feel any tougher than other runs I have done, despite running fairly hard both the previous nights.
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