‘An early start to get racked up in the arena meant that at 5:30am I was loitering outside the venue getting a few strange looks from the youngsters who were on their way home with a kebab – looked like it had been a good night!  The weather was awful and I was nervous about the 8 dead turns we’d have to make on a 4 lap course.   The swim start was a 10 min walk from the transition and I arrived at the swim to be asked by a friend “What’s the idea having googles and sunglasses?”…Damn – I’d forgotten to take my sunglasses off my head and now it was too late to get back to transition…Thank goodness for fellow Viceroy, Pam, who kindly saved my blushes!

The swim was one lap and relatively trouble free except for the 100m section of jelly fish in the dock!  23.03 after catching some nice legs for the first 750m until I was dropped into no mans land.  The transitions were long, getting too and from the arena floor, and clocking 3 mins for each despite no major dramas was going to hurt the overall time.

The bike was less trouble free – St John’s Ambulance had an extremely busy day.  It was pouring, poor visibility and one section had a cross wind which blew me a good few metres across the road before I could correct.  I should not have worried about the dead turns, I should have worried about the crowd barriers!  On 2 occasions the linked crowd control barriers blew over into the road – a strong rider in front of me had his race ended as 6 barriers toppled into his bike – more medical staff required.  I pushed hard but stayed safe on the turns clocking a 1hr 04mins 08secs for a relatively flat course.  The run was a nice flat 2 lap affair and the legs settled into the usual plod, and, as usual, runners started to come past in alarming frequency.  A gel at 5km gave me enough to pick the pace up for a reasonable finish and clocking a 41:44.  I was pleased with an overall 2hr 15min for 19th place in the age group – a decent confidence booster for Canada and certainly a well organised tri which I would choose over the over priced, mis-measured, over crowded London Triathlon every time….!’

As raced and reported by Mike Armer

In just 2 months, Kevin has achieved some speactacular results and thanks coach Mark Yeoman for getting him to this stage:

 

1. Dorney Evening Sprint Tri 23 July – Swim 13.35, cycle 34.11, run 23.18. Overall 1.13.06. 3rd in AG. PB by loads – and with calves which felt like they had been put through a meat grinder.

 

2. London Tri Olympic. Estimated 3hr for first attempt. Came in 2hr30min 50sec. I’ll claim sub 2-1/2 based on the 1k run you had to do in transition!

 

3. Bedfont Lake Park Run. Last three weekends first in AG. Last weekend, on my 207th run a PB at 21.36.  This time last year I was struggling to break 24 mins.

 

4. Surrey 100’ish. Cycle time 5hrs’ish. Stats… 4 different coloured rehydration drinks tried, 12 fig rolls, 6 packets of Drumstick sweets, 4 packets of Haribo, 6 bananas, 2 packets of biscuits, 1 energy gel and some rain apparently. 

 

Apologies to Mr Phil Sumner. I’m not the best person to talk to when racing and the last lap of a 10k run at London Tri is not a good time to try a conversation with me about Viceroy kit size! Sorry if I was a bit abrupt.

 

Note for next race. Do not put bananas in your kit bag, especially if you have to cycle someway to get there. They have a tendency to split, squash and spread themselves all over your kit. Whilst quite possibly a good lubricant it does start to stink after a while.

 

As raced and reported by Kevin Dargue