Dambuster Triathlon Race Report: Smug Fast Triathletes. And Me.

I’d set my alarm for 6am. I hated early starts. Then I realised that transition actually closed at 6:15. Insane. Absolutely insane. Not only do triathlons run on a Saturday but they’re insanely early. Obviously for the type of buff slick athletic type people you see on the front of magazines. The sort that like to get up early and go for a 3km swim and then don’t even sit around looking smug, but go for a bike ride as well. And then probably a run. I’d have pushed them all in the hedge except I couldn’t catch them. Smug FAST triathletes. 

I’d sighed as I’d reset the alarm for 5am. 5a-bloody-m. Ridiculous. That’s practically red-eye flight time.  It’d be much nicer to start it about 9am. Give me time to have a cooked breakfast, get the bike in the car and rock up at transition. The lake might even have warmed up a bit. And not just because of triathletes peeing in it. 

Smug Fast Triathletes. Bet they're holding their pee in ready for the lake too ...

However I resigned myself to being partially asleep until at least the start of the run and got myself in zombie-mode to the start of the race. It was about 6am and already I could smell the portaloos. I made a mental note to look at doing something competitive that involved nice smells. Like competitive baking or flower arranging. And I bet THEY didn’t involve getting up with the sunrise. Or getting kicked in the face. Unless it was REALLY competitive flower arranging. Like at the Women’s Institute and there was a fight over who got the big red peonies. Or something. 

I found myself a nice catch-22 situation. I couldn’t go into transition unless I was wearing my number. But my number needed to be left on the bike ready to be put on for the cycle leg of the triathlon. But what if I thought of something urgent last minute? And my number was on the bike instead of me? I consoled myself by wandering in and out of transition multiple times like I was on an invisible retractable leash. 

I was sure I’d forgotten something. I couldn’t remember WHAT I’d forgotten but I was sure there was something. Oh yes. I’d forgotten I didn’t like ridiculously early starts and people in wetsuits at 6am. Screw you lot. I’m going back to bed. Or I would have done if it wouldn’t have taken me about the same amount of time to load everything back into the car as it would to actually do the race.   

Transition area. So nice and peaceful before all the triathletes started cluttering it up with bikes and kit ...

There was no baggage store and we were told over the tannoy to just leave bags ‘under the trees’ in the open area of the park. I guess with all the £5,000+ bikes here, the thieves weren’t terribly interested in the £3.50 I had in change in my purse. Or my £1.38 off Tesco voucher. Despite the possibility of a free KitKat.  

The portaloos got progressively worse and the stink radius was getting wider and wider. At this rate they’d be able to smell them in Oxford by the end of the race. Apparently nervous triathletes have even worse tummies than nervous runners. And waiting in the queue hoping for a half decent one was like Russian roulette but with poo-up-the-wall and half-used toilet paper tubes instead of bullets. At least with Russian roulette you had 5 chances of not getting shot, with these toilets your desperate wish was to relieve your own stomach and come out without someone else’s diarrhoea on you. It was like hoping for a lottery win.   

And just to add to the fun, let me set the scene. You’re wearing a trisuit that does up at the front, a wetsuit that does up at the back and a jumper over the top. And you’re trapped in a small plastic cube full of other people’s poo that smells like nothing on earth. I made it out stomach relieved but mentally traumatised and with a form of PTSD which means I will never be able to go near IKEA’s plastic wardrobes without flashbacks and trembling. 

The smell wasn’t the worst thing though. Oh no. The very worst thing was seeing the end of the long zip from my wetsuit trailing down the shit encrusted hole in the portaloo. I just about managed not to cry and throw up on myself as I hauled it back out of the loo just to realise the soap and water had run out. To top it all off there was no loo roll. Not even a half ripped up toilet roll tube. But on an unrelated note Tesco receipts are quite soft. 

I made a vow that day. If Krypten factor comes back on TV, I am going to enter and WIN that. After managing to survive this, being trapped at the other end of a zipwire above a bit of nice clean mud will hold no fears. I will win that and I will be victorious. Especially if there’s a challenge involving rubber suits and being trapped in a loo. 

Swim

Looking out across the lake, it was as smooth as grey glass. Calm and beautiful ... or it was until the first wave of male triathletes got in, started weeing and stirred up all the mud on the bottom. Apparently the water temperature of Rutland Water was about 16 degrees that morning but after 3 or 4 waves of male triathletes by the time I got in it would almost be body temperature and probably about 50% urine. There would be fish bobbing to the surface. And probably a slower swimmer or two. 

Thanks to Coach Mary’s open water session, I’d practised beach starts and had already ripped off the skin on my feet practising so wasn’t worried about that. There was no more skin to rip off. However, too scared to position myself at the front in the swim next to The Proper Triathletes, I’d gone a few rows back and ended up behind people tiptoeing into the water as though they were going for a Swan Lake style swim start.  Very graceful ladies. Now get a bloody move on. 

I started drafting as soon as possible which was good but the pack of swimmers split and I lost the faster pack. The gap looked too big to make up and I had to decide whether to break out on my own or sit back and draft a slightly too slow swimmer and save my energy. I decided drafting was the best plan for me as it avoided my usual open water race strategy of:

1. Go-Off-Like-A-Rocket
2. Windmill-My-Arms
3. Get-Smacked-In-The-Face
4. Drink-Lake-Water
5. Panic 

It worked. I didn’t end up in my usual panicked state, didn’t drink any urine-laced lake water OR get kicked in the face (was this a PROPER triathlon??) but I did end up with a slower time than I’d hoped for.  

Another reason I might have been slow could have been the amount of time I spent gurning at the camera instead of getting a bloody move on ...

Cycle

As I headed out on the bike, Coach Mary, Loz and PhysioTerrorist Julie gave me a cheer and Coach Mary shouted that a friend, Jo had exited the water about a minute in front of me. “Go catch her!” 

I loved the ride. In fact, although cycling is one of my weakest disciplines (I have 3 weak triathlon disciplines), it’s the part of a triathlon I enjoy the most. After the claustrophobia of the water and the feeling of being in a dark enclosed body of water, being out on the bike is like open horizon freedom. The route was familiar and importantly I knew where the hills were. The big 3 hills of the Rutland Ripple felt smaller and not so daunting in the race and I was overtaking a lot of people here and could tell that I was picking off the faster swimmer, slower cyclist combinations. 

Hooray! Out of the pee-water!

I was really surprised to see people were walking, pushing their bikes, up the 2^nd hill in the Ripple. It is a sharp hill and a nasty surprise if you hadn’t recced the course especially after just having to push up the1^st big hill half a mile back. I didn’t have the heart to tell any of the walkers that there was another big hill coming up immediately after this one.

There was a good game of cat and mouse going on with 2 other lady cyclists near me and we were exchanging positions regularly and jockeying to be in front. I was stronger up the hills but they were stronger downhill and on the flats so it was good - ensuring I kept pushing on the flat sections. I wanted my speed to be over 18mph average even with the hilly course so it was good having them around, making sure I kept on it and didn’t slack off. We flew over the ripple and I thought we overtook Jo (who was out of the swim in front of me) just after the roundabout at about 10 miles which was a nice boost.  

 Most of the vehicles were fairly sensible and gave us plenty of space apart from a white van who boxed me in behind a man walking and pushing his bike up the hill. “C’mon shift!” I growled at the van as I didn’t want to lose my uphill momentum. Luckily White Van Man found a space to overtake and moved allowing me to go around the walker. 

Just past that bloody Range Rover

Just as we were coming into the entrance for Rutland Water I was overtaking a male cyclist and a Range Rover roared up from behind and decided to overtake us both on the wrong side of the road on a blind corner. This exemplary example of a Range Rover driver then decided to park in front of the barrier to chat to a marshal completely blocking the road and bringing me to a stop just before the race finish. The marshal appalled told him to “Move! Move!” and made him drive on while laughing at me bellowing at the driver “EXCUSE ME -MOOOOOVE!! (and having spotted the marshall and being aware of being DQ’d for improper conduct had added as an afterthought) “MOVE In a NICE way!!!” and waved me through to the end of the cycle section and transition.

Run

At work I have, what I am reliably informed is called ‘Resting Bitch Face’. In other words I’ll be sitting down in my office, trying to work out the proper wording to use in a quotation and will unintentionally give whoever is in my line of sight a death stare. Apparently. I’m completely unaware of this as I’m thinking about pneumatic training and how much discount someone should get while apparently giving a colleague a Medusa.  

However, it appears on a triathlon run I have ’Happy Run Face’. Multiple people actually smiled at me and I actually got some waves from runners coming the other way. It was nice but I couldn’t quite understand it until I realised my ‘Oh-My-God-I-hate-Running-After-Swimming-and-Cycling’ grimace was being mistaken for a smile. And my flailing arms were being mistaken for cheerful little waves. Never mind. Better ‘Happy Run Face’ than ‘Resting Bitch Face’. I didn’t want to be responsible for someone’s DNF after they mistook my RBF for an actual attempt to deathstare them out of the race. 

Obviously before 'Happy Run Face' kicked in ...

The run was hard. It was warm and I wasn’t entirely sure exactly where we were running to. This always concerns me and I’m much faster on a route I know. I suspect I have a secret fear that the race directors will extend the course an extra 4 miles and I’ll not be able to complete it. It also wasn’t the ‘pancake flat’ run I’d been told it was and while not being mountainous there were several large bumps which my tired legs told me would be MUCH more fun to walk up. “Shut up legs”. However I did see Jo coming the other way on the run which was nice so gave her a massive high five – obviously DIDN’T overtake her on the bike then! – and exchanged a few words with some other runners. I even managed a gurn for the photographer. The out section took forever but as usual the back section felt about a third as long as the out. I even managed a decent sprint finish and a negative split. 

Oh my God I'm going to DIE. And throw up. And cry. 

I hit almost all of the targets I’d set myself for this triathlon but training on your own is very good for creating a mini ego bubble as you don’t get to compare yourself to anyone else. I go for a bike ride around my local route and think “Ooh I did 17mph on that ride – much better than when I started on the road bike 4 months ago! I am getting fast!” And then you enter a race like Dambuster and you realise that it’s only fast for you. People were flying past me like I was on my granny shopper with a basket and Yorkshire terrier on the front. I was over 18mph on the bike which I was very pleased with but I was the bottom half of the pack. My swim was good – for ME. But I was near the back. For the run I was top 10 in my age category ... but not overall and not even in the females. It gave me a wobble when I realised. Huh, I’m not particularly good after all.

This is good. 

What would be the point of taking up a sport and training for 6 months and being near the front? Not only would that devalue the work and effort of the ladies who have been doing this for years, but it wouldn’t be worth my effort either. It would like starting running and being able to do a 5k in 18 minutes. Where would be the challenge? 

So time to work a bit harder. I hit my goals, didn’t die and now I’ve got a brand new set of FASTER targets. *Shakes fist at Coach Mary*

Dambuster targets

Target Swim: 28 – 35

Actual Swim: 31:14

Target  Transition 1: 2 mins

Actual Transition 1: 2:04

Target Cycle: 1:19 – 1:30

Actual Cycle: 1:23:25

Target Transition 2: 2 mins

Actual Transition 2: 1:20

Target Run: 38 mins – 45 mins

 Actual Run: 45:11

Position overall     491 of 754

Position female     78 of 163

Position 35-39 female     15 of 23

Dambuster triathlon recce: How To Embarrass Yourself On a Bike

I’ve finally got comfortable on the turbo trainer. In one sense anyway.


There has been a distinct lack of adventures. No falling off it, no breaking it, no kicking it, no throwing it into a cupboard, padlocking the door and eating the key. There has been a distinct lack of adventures. ACTUAL comfort is a completely different issue and one which I’m using padded shorts for. But I hadn’t attempted a group ride. 

Cue dramatic music ...

I may have accidentally entered a half iron triathlon. Which will involve riding a bike. *gasp* With other people *bigger gasp*. 

So when I was offered the chance of a recce of the bike section of the race I jumped at it. A ride on the race route with experienced cyclists? Heck yes! Would I be a liability and downright danger? Same answer. 

I was still feeling a bit under the weather but would try to avoid throwing up on any expensive looking bikes and try not to cough on anyone who mentioned they had an important race coming up. I’m kind like that. 

Due to the trusty Ford blowing up its turbo, I had a borrowed car – a little Peugeot. A REALLY little Peugeot. My first crisis was discovering that the bike rack didn’t fit on this miniature motor. 

However, by putting all the seats down, removing the headrests and moving all the seats forward, I could fit the bike in the back without having to remove bike wheels (important as I’m likely to forget to reconnect brakes). I can drive fine with my knees under my chin. Honest. It’s actually incredibly comfortable. Who needs to be able to change gear, anyway?

I took everything I could think of including floor pump, 2 sets of clothes, sunglasses with multiple lenses, trainers, bike shoes, drink bottles, hydration tablets and snacks. 

Arrived at the car park and discovered 15 different people each with their own floor pump, multiple changes of clothes, sunglasses, trainers, bike shoes, drink bottles and nutrition and other assorted kit. Maybe I hadn’t over packed after all.The sound of bumpers dragging the road was obviously the norm among triathletes. 

There were more bikes in that car park than at the bottom of a Dutch canal. Lots of bikes. I can’t tell the difference between an expensive bike and a cheap one. So I just avoided touching ANY of them.

Everyone else looked a bit serious and as though they knew exactly what they were doing. All expensive kit and shiny bikes. And they all knew each other. They didn’t look at all as though they fell over at major roundabouts because they couldn’t get their foot unclipped. No one else was dressed head to toe in budget kit or wearing their padded shorts over their running tights. I got the sinking feeling that I wasn’t going to fit in ...

The group of cyclists. I'm skulking at the back. This is PRE pushing-up-the-hill. (Source: Inspire2Tri

The organiser gave a briefing of the route and safety instructions and checked that everyone had done a group ride before. I tentatively raised my hand and was immediately outed as ‘person-not-to-ride-next-to-in-case-they-fell-off-and-scratched-my-expensive-bike-on-the-way-down’.  

In fact at least one person looked as though they were probably wondering whether it would be good form to send me off in a ‘group’ on my own.

I was relieved when they announced the faster groups were going first. Good. The ones with the most expensive bikes and the shiniest gear would go off first and there would be less people to watch me attempt to start but fall off / drop my bike / hit the kerb / embarrass self. As I undoubtedly would.

Then they decided the slow group would go first. 

Bugger. Despite having spent the last 2 months pedalling furiously and going precisely nowhere on the turbo and most up my childhood years cycling to whichever pub the parents had decided would make a good bike ride destination, I am NOT a confident road cyclist. Especially not when trying to balance on a road bike with tyres the width of a chipolata sausage and with my feet attached to the pedals.

I also really, really hadn’t helped myself by leaving the bike in the hardest gear. Sigh. I clipped right foot into pedal, prepared to push off ... and didn’t go anywhere at all thanks to the start being up a steep hill and my bike being in completely the wrong gear.

I had a flashback to the time I’d jammed the spin bike in a class by spinning the resistance dial the wrong way and couldn’t remember which way to turn the knob to get it back to the able-to-turn-pedals-by-human-force-setting and had to creep off the bike in the middle of the class and find a different one. There wasn’t the option to nab someone else’s bike this time. They were all standing over them looking disapproving. 

But one of the ride leaders took pity on me and actually PUSHED ME UP THE HILL.

The shame.

Was completely unable to clip feet into pedals due to mortification of being pushed up hill and waved them around in the air in my attempts to find the pedals, change into an easier gear and keep the momentum up. I am SO smooth at this cycling. 

Sigh.

I finally got my feet clipped in and was so relieved to actually be moving and clipped in that in attempt to join rest of cycle group, I zipped across road andalmost threw myself under the wheels of a Volvo. 

So to recap so far: 

• NOT wearing proper gear instead a strange medley of running and cycle gear culminating in the padded cycling shorts on top of leggings look.
• NOT being able to actually get bike to go and having to be pushed up a hill.
• NOT able to actually pedal bike.
• NOT able to clip in without waving legs around.
• Attempting to kill self by throwing self –and bike – under passing car.

Decided only way to redeem self was by keeping up with rest of group and keeping quiet. And not getting pushed up any more hills. 

Kept quiet, kept head down and kept pedalling. 

But all of a sudden the road seemed to disappear and we were at the crest of what would be called in a kids playground a ‘death slide’. Amazing.

Was extremely disappointed that the rest of the group didn’t cycle as fast as they could down the massive hill as I did look slightly odd doing that and shouting “Wheeeeeee!” on my own. Maybe they didn’t understand how to do downhills.  

I was relieved I did give it a bit of welly on the downhill as it gave me momentum to inch up what appeared to be an even bigger mountain on the other side. It was definitely a mountain and it all but had snow at the top and people with crampons and ropes.

While I appreciate that the midlands aren’t particularly mountainous, this hill didn’t seem to be stopping. It was the hill that kept on giving. I’d run out of gears a fair way back and I was running out of available breath and I was already at what felt like max heart rate. In fact I felt as though I was exceeding that by some way. I was EXPECTING a mountain goat or a Sherpa at any moment. But I was HOPING for a St Bernard with a flask of brandy around its neck. 

On the plus side I wasn’t stopping ... but only because I couldn’t unclip my feet to get off and walk because there wasn’t anyone around to push me off the hill to get me going again.

Just as my legs were about to give out and my breathing hit ‘0906 caller’ volume, I arrived at the peak. Well. Top.

The group stopped at the top to wait for everyone. Thank goodness. A chance to try and regain composure and get breathing down to normal volume or at least down to ‘barking sea lion’ volume level.

Sea Lion Volume ... Source

I checked my watch. Yep. I’d almost hit max heart rate ... and we’d gone 0.81 of a mile. Oh. Only 24.19 miles to go then. *Screams inside head*.

Legs suggested slyly that it might hurt less if I didn’t go as fast as I could downhill and maybe saved my breath for actually breathing rather than shouting “Wheeeeeee!”. Especially as it had been scientifically proven that shouting “Wheeeeeee!”doesn’t actually make you go any faster. 

Told legs to shut up and keep pedalling. But decided to keep shouts of “Wheeeeeee!” inside head from now on.

I don’t think I was the only person to overcook it on that uphill and when we reached the next peak in the range (read: hill) we were all going a bit slower than on the first one. It certainly felt easier anyway. Maybe having a chance to warm up a bit and get a few miles done made the difference. This hill was the 2nd in a group of 3 big hills (we’d go over the 1stin the set on the last part of the loop) called The Rutland Ripple. 

We were on a main road and appeared to have left the hills behind us and I’d noticed that I was getting passed by cyclist after cyclist. This was a bit worrying. I had no idea of the route we were riding and probably only a 50% chance of making it back to the car if I turned around and tried to remember the way I’d come. 

I was very relieved when I realised that I’d been caught up by the fast cyclist group rather than being dropped by the slow cyclists. I know I have to be pushed up hills, but I do have my pride. 

Well, maybe not pride but my car is in a car park 10 miles away and if I get lost I may never find my way back to it again. Or more importantly find my way to the cake we’d been promised at the end of the ride. 

We stopped to regroup a few times as the groups were getting a bit mixed up now and we took it as an opportunity to have a drink and a chat. I was relieved that I wasn’t at the back of the group. Training on the turbo is brilliant, but it meant that I had no idea of the speed I ride at on the roads. 

One thing that the ride highlighted was that it wastime to get the bike serviced. In the last 5 miles, it had developed a squeak in the right pedal and the gears were very clicky. Apparently there was more to looking after your bike than a quick wash and a liberal application of WD40 every now and then.However nothing actually fell off the bike which was a bonus. Especially as I’d be unable to stop to retrieve it due to being clipped in and having no handy chap to push start me up the hill.  

The bike ride was only just over an hour long, but it was interesting to see the difference in other road users. We started out about 9:30am on a Sunday morning so the majority of people on the road were probably driving for leisure rather than rushing to work but there were some huge variances in the amount of safe distance they gave us. 

Most people were brilliant, but one old lady overtook me on a busy main road, only to screech to a halt directly in front of me to turn left into a farm gateway. It was a bit of a close call. She just didn’t seem to get the idea that there might be other people on the road. She was beeped at by a couple of the cars behind her and it was good to know that not ALL road users are out to get the cyclists. Just apparently little old ladies.

Beware this behind the wheel of a car. Source 

The last section of the ride was mainly flat with enough small undulations to keep it interesting and it was fast with a good quality road. I’d been fairly reasonable on the uphills but I didn’t have much power on the flats so had to work much harder to keep up with the others at the front. Which was good. I want to make sure I improve on these rides. If I’m going to nearly end up under the wheels of an old lady’s Nissan Micra every time I venture out I want it at least to be a good ride up to that point. 

It was a good ride. Stopping for the chats every now and then gave us a chance to get to know the others and to reassure me that I wasn’t a pariah for my earlier misdemeanours and choice of kit. We were all going to be doing the Dambuster triathlon so it didn’t take long for the race chat to start.  "Have you been cycling long?” (Are you competition), “How long have you been training? (Are you competition), “What other races have you got coming up?” (Can I hobble you in these so you aren’t competition) and more importantly the discreet detective work of some of the others trying to work out how old people were. (Are you in my age group?) But it was all friendly and nice to know I wasn’t the only one there new to triathlon. (We can be nice to her, she’s not competition)

We were back to our starting point within 90 minutes and it was reassuring that I needed no help to stop, despite my less than salubrious start. 

However, there was a catch. We weren’t allowed cake until we’d run 4km. This was the 2nd part of the training and a test to see how well our legs did after a bike ride. The triathlon test.

I decided to keep myself going by spotting runners in the distance and trying to catch them up. Plus the quicker I got back to Mary’s studio, the quicker I could get at the food. 

I stumped along the path, like a stiff-legged scarecrow in thermals and trainers and concentrated on the cake. It was a nice surprise that the garden centre was a lot closer than I’d expected and because it’s nice to be neat – it was exactly at the 1 mile mark. The backwards section of an out and back always feels so much quicker than the way there so I kept running and ignored the coldness of the wind on my face.

It was done in a blink. Then I was in the warm of the studio, surrounded by cake and with a steaming cup of coffee in my hand. 

Cake, coffee and cycling. AND I didn’t fall off. Things were definitely looking up.