New Forest Triathlon

When is a race not a race? When it’s the New Forest post covid 19 lockdown triathlon… Billed as a non-competitive event, I was really interested in what my first post covid lockdown was going to feel like. First big difference was the pre-race briefing via online video on Friday evening for the Sunday am race. I couldn’t make the time slot but the organisers handily uploaded the video to watch later. I actually quite liked this in some ways, it meant that you did have to do your prep, but a 30 min briefing was able to cover a lot more than the usual quick 5 min chat before each wave started.

A 4:30 alarm was a bit of a shock to the system but it does make for light traffic 😊. Even my usual reliable pre-race playlist for the car journey failed to wake me up and I turned up yawning like a lazy cat. (Thank god its not a race…😊). A couple of quid donation for car parking, a quick ride to transition and into the socially distanced fun. I was surprised how normal it all felt in transition, the marshals checking your number and making sure your brakes work and bar ends in etc, the only difference is you pulling your own brakes with the marshals being hands off. Racking was 3 to a section so a good distance between bikes, loads of space to spread kit out and faff about without annoying others. A quick energy gel, quick warm up then a 15 mins walk to the lake and I was feeling amped and ready to go. Obviously, as its 2020, it all went a bit wrong for the organisers when the safety boat broke down, so when I got to the lake 45 mins after the first swimmers were due to go off, we’d yet to start and were waiting for a new safety boat. To be fair to the organisers, a new boat turned up 10mins later and everyone lined up for the socially distanced 1 at a time swim start.

Into the water in race number and then off at roughly 15 second intervals. A bit of a change from the usual mass start or wave starts meant it was a bit of a different feel, but it definitely had its benefits, namely it being much more civilised! The detailed briefing meant there weren’t any surprises on the swim course, nice big buoys to site off and lovely venue to swim in. To be honest, without the usual churn of the mass start I struggled to get going a bit and couldn’t really find a pace that felt right. The open water swimming forced onto us by lockdown had certainly helped with my sighting though and I followed something almost like a straight line for a change. The single starts meant that people were nicely spread out but I still found a similar speed swimmer to almost bump into every 3 mins. 1100 metres ticked off and didn’t feel like a great swim but not terrible either. As usual the blood drained from my head as I climbed out and cue the usual dizziness, nausea and stumbling like an idiot up the swim out.

Having checked out the 400m run back to transition from swim out I’d left some trainers by the lake and it was definitely worth the few seconds to get them on. Whilst a fair bit of the run was matted there was a good couple of hundred metres of gravel and broken tarmac which made me feel smug passing other athletes tip toeing through the stones. I felt less smug after speeding through transition and getting halfway to bike out before realising I’d still got my wetsuit bottoms on. Quick U turn to ditch those (that would have been a warm bike leg!) and thank god I noticed before I’d gone any further! (And thank god its not a race…)

My second ever attempt at a flying mount out of transition failed miserably when I couldn’t get my foot in one of the shoes and had to stop 100m down the road to sort it out (would have been really annoying if it was a race). A good surge of adrenaline, mixed with some annoyance and my new power metre tells me I averaged 900 watts over 3 seconds getting back up to speed, Im pretty sure that beats my best sprint on Zwift! Not the way to ease into a bike leg and it took a good few minutes for my heart rate to settle down and my legs to drain some lactic acid. If you’ve never done a triathlon in the New Forest I’d recommend it. It can be a bit sketchy but there’s something wonderful about dodging round ponies, donkeys and the occasional cow whilst trying to ride hard and edge onto the aero bars when you can. After a close call with an errant cow who fancied that the grass was greener on the other side of the road as I was approaching at warp factor 0.0001 I decided that the drops were the place for me whenever the animals were at all close. Its also pretty open up there, and the wind was a real killer for a good half of the bike course. Im not that comfortable in the aero bars in the wind so rode on the drops for most of this section too, not the most aero but much more comfortable. (And its not a race, is it?). Worse though, was the dreaded back issues that reappeared 1/3 of the way through. Cant seem to shake these off, I’ve done hard bike session, including TT’s at Goodwood without any real issue but the bike after the swim just seems to tweak it something rotten. More S&C work required I think…. Anyway, 33k on the bike flew by in the blink of a painful eye and I managed not to lose a shoe on the dismount for a change.

T2 was a much more civilised transition than T1 and I was swiftly out onto the 10k run. A pretty simple out and back with a bit of a loop, mostly on road with a little gravel climb and descent in the middle. The back pain eased off to be replaced with general heavy legs and fatigue of a tri run leg, Id forgotten how tough it is to push the pace on the run at the end of a tri and I hate to think how much of a grandad I looked like shuffling round the course. Things eased off a little bit after a couple of K and I was on for a decent negative split run for a change, that is until the last few km’s where the wheels came off a bit, heart rate through the roof with ever declining pace! Fortunately the run was slightly under the 10k so the finish came up a bit quicker than expected and a last minute push for the finish line saw me overtake a couple of people in the last 100m and finish like a hero (that’s what it looked like in my head anyway).

Through the finish shoot, collect your own medal and help yourself to snacks and water. Again a slightly different feel but still some good chat in the finish area and a good sense of satisfaction. A good result in the end, 13th overall in the standard distance, with Dave Robbins close on my heals in 17th. Although none of it matters, it wasn’t a race after all, was it?...... 😊