Triathlon Europe

9:47 at Ironman Austria

Here's Ed's post-race report, following his first Ironman in Austria....

After the months of training, the final few days before the Austrian ironman just flew by.. The usual pre race
scares were of course present, with the dustcap of my wheels breaking the day
before and forgetting my run/bike bags at the hotel on the way to
registration...

The pre race briefing also caused concern when we were told the temperature
would probably top 35 degrees and that the race would not be one for setting
personal bests (I was forced to disagree as it was my first ever Ironman!!).

Race day- after the pre race nerves passed and the gun went for the start, I
soon found a pair of feet to follow round the 3.8k of the swim..  I have the guy
swimming next to me 100m to prove he was trustworthy and swimming in a straight
line, then dropped back and followed him for the rest of the swim.  I became
very possessive of his feet when passing other swimmers and made sure not to get
dropped.  As a result, the swim went quite smoothly until entering the infamous
canal.  The last 800m of the swim is a canal where everyone is compacted into a
3m wide canal.  It all got a bit physical, but I emerged unscathed in 1:01.

The first lap of the two loop bike course was fairly un-eventful.  The support
was amazing around the course with many people just sitting out to watch the
countless £5,000+ bikes whizz by.  The second bike lap was where things began to
get strange.  The temperature went from 35 degrees to heavy rain and my mind
when from relative clarity to a halucigenic mess.  The heaviness of the rain was
also not helpful on occasions and forced me to close alternate eyes while
cycling downhill on the tri-bars at 55+kmh.  The cycle finished after 5:14 of
pain.

After a fairly weak cycle I headed out to my favourite part of the race.. the
run.  While I was impressed by the support the whole way round the cycle, I was
staggered by how good the support on the run was.  The aid stations every
two kilometres were supplemented by most of the local children who seemed to
have set their own aid stations up.  These comprised of a bucket of water and 10
or so sponged.  One of the children would hand you a sponge while the others
headed off down the road to collect used sponges.  There were people every few
meters the whole way down the two lap run course and it felt like everyone was
cheering you on.  Despite the pain, I don't think I've every had such an
enjoyable run.

As the end approached, I put on a final sprint down the finishing chute only to
cramp up just across the line... as a result, my official finisher photo has me
looking distinctly unhappy and in alot of pain.  Oh well, theres always next
year.

I finished exhausted in 9:47

The Beaver Triathlon 2010

Ed raced the Beaver middle distance Triathlon on Saturday 29th May, finishing 5th in age group in 4:40:44. His splits were: Swim 31:51, Bike 2:26:22, Run 1:36:43

results link

Race report:

The drive out to Beloir castle for the Beaver middle distance tri was daunting with rain hammering the windows of the car and the prospect of 5 hours of running, swimmimg and cycling doing little to lighten the mood.
The little beaver race (Olympic distance) was run first and we were greeted by hordes of cold triathletes advising us to ensure we have something warm for the bike... on investigation, I had forgotten both my  arm warmers and gloves.... not a great start!
The race had an unusual start in the shallow Belvoir castle lake.  Unusual in that it was so silty the water was actually black  in certain points.
My swim progressed unremarkably (aside from only getting in the water 10 seconds before the start) and I exited into T1 all ready for the cycle.
The cycle course was technical and really did not play to my strengths.  Due to a recent knee injury getting out the saddle on the bike is tough and anything that involves downhills has me reduced to a nervous wreck with very tired fingers from constantly grabbing the brakes.  Needless to say, my bike leg was less than outstanding.
..and onto the run (the fun part)....
It’s always a pleasure  leaving the bike behind and heading out onto my strongest discipline.   Passing quite a few people I really enjoyed the run leg... the only downside was its length.  While keeping a very keen eye on my Garmin, I was really disappointed to see the 21.1km barrier past with still the biggest hill of the course to go and 10 minutes of running left.  I briefly debated staging a sit down protest to mark my frustration to the race organisers, but instead opted to plough on.
All in all, a great days racing... (made even more so, but pipping my brother to the line by 2 minutes!!)