‘It was a beautiful day on Sunday up at the Cotswold Water Park, for the Cotswold End of Season Tri, if a bit of a chilly start. I wasn’t set to go until 10am in the 5th wave of the day, so lots of time to watch the action and let the nerves build and let breakfast settle (or not!).
The swim was 2 laps of a 750m course and having watched a couple of waves get tangled up ahead of me, I made sure to get a good start position and try to get out and clear before the previous wave began their second lap… all a good bit of sharpened elbows and white water action (drills in the lake certainly helped me here!). The swim felt good and I came out of the water about 5th (of the orange hats) with a time of 25.45 and headed towards my bike.
I seemed to take quite a while (2mins) in transition and resorted to sitting down to prize off my wetsuit, but finally got going and headed off for the first of 2 x 20.5km bike laps. I have to say it was a little soul destroying to be continuously counting cyclists passing me on the bike, but I was taking a mental note of how many girls went by with a plan of trying to hunt them down on the run. My Bike was around 1hr30ish…. snails have been known to cover ground at a greater rate!
Into T2 and determined to waste no time, I had it down to 47seconds – I did have a slight disaster moment as I headed out onto the first lap and attempted to redo my hair tie (this is something only the girls will sympathise with) only to snap the band completely, which meant I had to complete 6 whole laps with flailing Medusa style hair – nightmare!! Anyway, hair aside I set about the task of picking off runners whilst trying to keep track of how many times I’d passed the finish…….. and then I saw her, about 4 laps down, 2 to go…. if I could just get past and stay ahead…… and I made it, collapsing across the finish with a run of 39.24, and a total of 2hrs 32 – and a big smile.
Provisional results have me down as 1st female in the 30-34 category and 6th female overall.’
As raced and reported by Jen Isaac
