The race was almost over before it started - jumping into the water for the start I landed on a submerged rock and split my heel. A nice cut and a bit of bruising but I guess it was an extra incentive not to heel strike on the run?!
Swim - 26.31
Had no intention to push hard in the swim as I didn't want a overly eager swim to haunt my race later on - I've not been able to put too many hours in in the pool and am roughly where I was last year. This was my first o/w swim of the year and first in a wetsuit for nearly 8 months so it made it interesting... Had a strange swim, every time I got onto the feet of someone I seemed to lose concentration and got dropped straight away. Guess that's just a lack of open water practice for the year - felt good in my nice new Sailfish G Range wetsuit though and was out of the water in a good 10th place.
Bike - 2.23.58
I had rather a leisurely transition as I was convinced I was going to be sick! 20 seconds holding onto the railing sorted me out though. The bike was a closed circuit relatively flat one with a tough 1.5-2k climb at the far point of each (x4) lap, and 5 dead turns. Although the weather was turning, with rain and a pretty strong wind I'd figured the bike was the part of the race that I could do fairly well on. I pushed hard for the first lap and got up to 6th, then it dawned on me that I was only 1 hour into a 4hr+ race so had better ease off a bit (looking back at my splits, if I'd have carried on at my first lap pace it would have been a 2h15-2h16 bike leg).
A couple of people went past on the 2nd lap and I just let them go, easing off and making sure I was right on the money with my nutrition (125ml of GO and 30g of malt loaf per lap). By the middle of the 3rd lap I was getting real back problems - this is something I suffer with on the bike, and with my longest ever previous ride on the TT bike being 42 miles I was pretty well expecting it. I had to keep sitting up for the last lap and a half and lost a few more positions.
Run - 1.21.46
Despite a solid half marathon a couple of weeks before this was where I had my real worries. I often suffer from stomach problems on my normal runs, so was worried at what could go wrong on this leg - nutrition/dehydration (a big problem of mine)/cramping etc. Again it was a 4 lap run which I started in 13th place. As I'd gone into the race with no real expectations I decided to run within myself and make sure (as much as I could) that I got through relaxed and problem free - rather than push early to knock another minutes off and find that I didn't have as much as I thought in the legs.
Immediately from the first lap I felt pretty good - the back problems were not causing me any issues on the run. I had socks on and my comfortable (not racing flats) Mizuno's with lashings of vaseline to try and ensure a lack of blistering - and all was pretty well in half mara world. My splits ended up very pleasing for the run - 20.12/20.31/20.26/20.29. Very little deviation and very little drop off.
On getting over the line my body just seized up - so much discomfort from so many areas! Strangely I've never actually had a massage before, so the shock of having a massage by 4 people at once in the recovery area left me pulling some fantastic faces! But left me able to (just) walk which I don't think I'd have been able to otherwise.
Overall
I'm happy with the result. I didn't suffer in the ways I thought I would, and if this was my 2nd/3rd/4th race at this distance I would have felt more comfortable to push a lot more - I think 4.10-4.12 would have been very achievable. I may not feel this good every time but it was a nice start. It's renewed a bit of my enthusiasm for racing too which I was really looking for - it felt like much more of a test against myself than a sprint or standard distance. If something goes wrong in a middle distance race, like a slow transition, or a missed turn on the bike there's plenty of chance to put that right. Whereas in the shorter events your race can be ruined by things that are completely out of your control.
A couple of days complete rest now followed by a couple of easy ones then I need to get myself tuned up for some shorter distance racing...
