Anyway, a couple of weeks of solid training, and then it was onto the club relays for Red Venom. It was a weekend that I had heard good things about, and was looking forward to being part of a team as something a bit different.
On the Saturday, it was a format of Swim, swim, swim, swim, bike, bike etc, and I was second member of the team. It was chaos, but great fun, and the team did really well and we came away with second place.
Onto the Sunday, and with an 'elite' style relay in the morning to qualify for the afternoons finals, (we had to achieve a top 10 to qualify), it was a controlled effort to save as much as possible for the afternoon, and we qualified in 5th. Onto the afternoon, and we decided tactics, as the key was not individual speed, but getting the team round as quick as possible.
Coming out of the swim, we were all together, so onto the bike, and as I had been cruising on the swim I was feeling strong, so spent a lot of the first lap on the front, to try to let the others recover for the run. The second lap we rotated through as a team, and came into T2. There was a slight issue in T2, as we were tight on space in the racking, but luckily, our slower runner managed to get out without problems, closely followed by me, but then a bit of a gap to our last two members. I made the decision to go hard and bridge up to Sean, currently first for our team, and help him out as much as possible, but pushing him up the hills and when I could. Gradually Phil and Richard caught us, and the second lap we were all together. That meant we shared the workload of getting Sean round, and coming into the Finish line, we were aware it was close, so gave everything for the final sprint. Frustratingly, we finished in 4th.
Despite being slightly disappointed with the final result, I had a great weekend with the Red Venom team, and really enjoyed my first experience of the 'organised chaos' that was the relays.
The following weekend it was back to the standard format, at the Bala triathlon, North Wales. I was hoping for a good result leading into the race, but I knew there were some strong athletes competing, and a couple of unknown athletes, who I had been told were ones to watch.
Onto the swim, and the lake was extremely choppy. However, I got out well, and lead from the start to end of the swim, although it didn't go exactly to plan. Going away from the shore, I was struggling to move close to the buoys, after starting on the far side of the course, due to the strong current. after the turnaround, there was a different problem... I couldn't see any of the buoys that I was meant to be swimming at, and in the end I just headed towards the big inflatable on shore, not sure quite what it was actually for (it turned out it was the finishing chute...)
Coming into T1, I slipped on the grass going round the first corner, after coming out of the water with Iestyn on my feet, and a sizeable gap to the next athletes.
A poor T1 meant that I lost 20 seconds or so to him onto the bike, but once I caught, I continued to work at a controlled but solid pace, looked round and found I had lost him. With his pre race words of 'don't go out too hard' ringing in my ears I reached the turnaround. Fortunately this point gave me a chance to see what lead I had, and was worried to see that super strong cyclist Oliver Simon had ridden his way into second, so I knew he was closing quickly. Luckily, the return leg was downhill, so I pushed as hard as I could, constantly looking behind to see if he was there. I made it into T2 still in first, and just as I was exiting transition I saw Oliver coming in. The race was on.
Onto the run, and really laid it down on the first km, and then settled down to a solid pace. At the 5K turn, I was still in first, but as I got to see Iestyn pass Oliver and in second again, I knew I had to run well to hold him off. I pushed on and as the km's ticked along, I realised that I had the race!!
A great feeling, and good confidence builder leading into the last couple of races of the season.
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