Triathlon National Club Relays

In preparing for the London Triathlon I was pleased to be taking part in the National Relays in Nottingham this weekend. Having just reached the age of 40 I was invited to join Cambridge Triathlon's COGs team (Cambridge Old Gits).

We got the bus at 5.15am from Cambridge to be there for the morning events - mixed and ladies teams. The mens teams had to wait until the afternoon to race. The waiting around was ok but we all but missed out on the Cambridge Triathlon BBQ which occurred throughout the afternoon whilst we were racing. There was some food left when we finished about 6pm but I failed to find a beer and we had to be packed up and on the bus for 7pm. Next year I think COGS needs to be a mixed team!

Anyway, the event is a relay where each member of a team of 4 does each event. So, we all swim, one after the other, then we all ride then we all run. Transitions are not really involved since you are handing off to a team mate and can then get your wetsuit off at your leisure.

I was quite disappointed by my swim. Race nerves, adrenalin, murky water and crowded swimming always seems to unsettle me. My disappointment comes from the fact that I have been enjoying swimming in a lake every friday night to get familiar with this outdoor swimming thing and in the race I still struggled with it, even though it was just 500m. I'm not sure what time I got but it would have been quite unimpressive.

Mind you, after the swim leg we were still in the middle of the pack so, putting that behind us we hopped on our bikes. I had nearly an hour to wait for my bike leg but it was hard to really relax. Before long I saw Gregor cycling in and we handed over the wrist band 'baton' and I hobbled in my bike shoes to the mounting area and shot off. The course was a loop around a lake with strong wind in one direction letting me get near 30mph in one direction at least. I've been riding time trials quite a bit this year so I enjoyed the bike leg a lot and managed to overtake a few folks. I think I did about 24:15 for the 15km. Don, who is 20 years older than the rest of us, did the fastest bike leg in 23:30 or something - pretty impressive.

Finally it was the run. I set off and held a 6:50min/mile pace for a while but couldn't hang on to that after the efforts on the bike an hour before. I haven't run for a couple of weeks and I really felt it in my legs. People I could normally keep up with powered past me. Quite disappointing. I think I finished the 5km in about 22 minutes even though I had had an hour to recover after the bike.

As a team we did alright really. The COGs were 3rd out of the 12 teams Cambridge entered and one of the teams ahead of us has world champions in it!

Our times were:
4x500m swim (36.12 - 83rd overall)
4x15km bike (1:36:19 - 106th overall)
4x5km run (1:27:37 - 100th overall)

Overall time: 3:40:10 (16 Male Vet 40 team out of 37; 103rd of 202 teams in total)

Good fun! I was very pleased to see our Ladies 50+ team win a 1st place too.