Challenge Henley, Half Ironman distance was taken on by Yann and Peter this weekend… yes, Yann who reported his first triathlon at the beginning of this season!
Peter Bell begins the story of his challenge:
‘Last weekend saw my first venture into longer distance triathlons at the wonderful Challenge Henley event. I had hoped that my training this year (targeted at Olympic distance events) would see me through the event ok – how naive I was!
Race day started cold and misty – that was a surprise and shock to many of the competitors. In fact the starts were delayed about 15 minutes in the hope the mist would rise. But it was still pretty murky when I entered the Thames for the start of my wave. I’ve never seen so much bedlam at the start of a race – arms and legs flying everywhere for the first few hundred metres until the river widened out a bit. After that is was a fairly uneventful swim…and I just focussed on the technique we’d learned from Mark in the open water sessions. I got out in just over my target time of 36 minutes and into the change tent after I’d found my T1 transition bag.’
Meanwhile, Yann’s swim had not gone so well: ‘I just did not know where I was going, it was quite foggy, I did zig zag a fair bit and I was, not surprisingly, by myself pretty much the entire swim. I was very cold going out to T1, and struggled to get ready for the bike. So after a slow start, it was time to go faster!! The bike went really well, weather was perfect and overtaking other athletes was giving me a great boost of confidence. Some parts of the course were very fast and really good fun.’
Pete on the other hand was not so cheerful by the end of T1 as he moved to the bike: ‘Then started 3 hours of pain – 90km on the roads into the Chiltern Hills. I had debated whether to change into cycling clothes but in the end, I stayed in my tri-suit. I paid for that in the last 15km or so of the bike ride (let’s just say that thin, wet chamois didn’t offer me much protection in the aero-tuck position and if you haven’t HTFU then you’re going to be in trouble). Coupled with that, my lingering chest infection/cough and lack of long bike rides this season meant that I bonked and I couldn’t wait for the pain to end…the only things keeping me going were the fact I knew that Viceroys teammate Yann was closing in on me and that once I spotted the final roundabout, it meant I would be on the fine descent back into Henley. Yann passed me and we gave each other some great words of encouragement and shared our pains and finally my spirits and energy levels soared as I approached the roundabout and averaged 50km/h for the last 4 or 5 kms back into transition. I’ve read and heard so much about “jelly legs” on the bike to run transition but never really experienced it in the races I’d done to date – until now…my goodness, I think my legs were doing a completely different event from the rest of my body as I tried to run to the change tent for T2. I had to sit down and try to get my mental faculties back as I thought about what I needed to take from my bag for the run.
As I left the change tent I made a schoolboy error and left behind a couple of painkillers I’d put in my T2 bag. 1km out on the run, my lower back started to seize up and I reached into my back pocket to take out the pills, only to discover they were not there! My heart sank as I realised I would just need to tough this one out for the next 20km…I don’t remember too much about the run…in fact it went past quicker and slightly easier than I had initially anticipated (thanks largely to coke and bananas at the feed stations). I managed a 1hr 37 min half-marathon at the end that, given the state I was in after the bike, I had to accept even though it was 7 min slower than my target. So I “grimaced” my way over the finish line in 5hrs 25 mins. A reasonable effort that sets me a target –I know I can get close to 5 hrs with the right preparation… and ignore the fact that I told everyone on Sunday afternoon and evening that I would never do this again!’
Yann had by now his first half Ironman, pushing through the pain: ‘I loved it. Getting out of the bike and starting the run was horribly painful, I really thought I over did it on the bike but kept going. Those little bridges along the course were killing me but again I was still overtaking many athletes which was, in a selfish way, really good for morale. I also saw Peter couple of times, he was running really well and it was great to be able to give each other some encouragement. It started to rain and the final 5km against the wind were really tough. I did not enjoy the run, my legs were far too painful but focussing on my technique helped me to get a very good split, for me! Overall, 5:10 for my first half, 8th in my age group, so a very good day after all!’
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