Race Report - Turriff Triathlon

Here is my race preview. 

Here is a link to the results if you don't want to read all my waffling.

Turriff is something of a strange race. As the first local triathlon of the year and with a novice distance available it attracts a disproportionate number of first timers but also it serves as a good tester for early season form so some of the big guns of the local scene also (normally) turn out. 

Being so early in the season it is always untidy as people have 6 months of swimming since their last race and find it difficult to predict their swim performance accurately. This means that right from the off there is a bit of a mess as people with disparate times get laned together or set up in slightly the wrong order. 

Also it is at a strange time of the year and very early in the season which means the weather can do all sorts of things. Even on the best of days the North-East of Scotland is going to be a cold place to be trying to bike in a wet tri-suit. On worse days it has been changed into an aquathon due to wind or wet conditions. 

Then the layout of course is strange as the transition area is quite a long way from the pool. This means there is effectively a double transition arrangement as some people lay out their gear next to the pool and run the 300m in their bike gear, whilst others run in their swim gear (and bare feet) and make all their changes at the bike. 

Anyway, that is a lot of excuses for why things might not go smoothly at Turriff. Here is what actually happened. 

I got up in the morning and did a short stretching session. This was mainly targetted at easing off hte hamstring that has been bugging me all week. Was very successful. Didn't have any problems for the rest of the day. 

I had to change from my normal fuelling plans as I didn't buy butteries this week. Also I expected to be in a later heat with an almost lunchtime start so I needed to allow for that. So I had a bigger breakfast than normal with a bowl of cereal a couple of bagels and some tea.

I had pre-packed the car and checked everything twice the night before so I had no last minute equipment panics. Knowing it is a race with a lot of triathlon virgins I had also packed double of a lot of things just in case anyone needed to borrow things. I considered packing a second bike in case it was too windy for the TT bike to be useful, but I am just about confident enough in my bike handling to feel that if it was going to be too dodgy for me to handle then the bike leg would be cancelled anyway. 

I arrived, registered, set up transition, listened to the briefing and then went back to the car for a nap. 

The swim was 'ok'. I didn't start fast enough so I couldn't get on to the feet of the one man in front and the two guys behind me passed after about 100m, and then they moved away so I didn't get a huge benefit from drafting them either. I also had to get rid of my tumble turns at about this point. I just can't seem to keep them tidy enough when I am working at full pace. Gives me something to work on.

At about the 500m point the three of them all lapped me. This time they were going much slower so I was easily able to get on the back of the chain and got towed to 720m and then was able to push the last two lengths in clean water. Out of the pool in 13:02. slightly faster than last year but still behind the 12:40 I thought I would do. I am going to blame the short course pool for the slow time. Longer pool and less turns should have kept me on the chain longer first time round and less chance of the lapping.

Out into T1 and I tried a new trick. Turriff is a long distance transition so I made a lot of changes on the move with glasses, race belt, gloves on and goggles, hat, earplugs off while I jogged down to the bike leaving me with just helmet and socks / shoes to add when I arrived. 

Unfortunate side-effect of the subsequently smooth transition was that I forgot to press garmin on the way out so I missed the first mile on the bike as garmin thought I was still in T1. This has made it difficult to reconstruct a comparison to last year. I felt pretty good and I passed a few people on the first climb. It looks from the garmin sections that I do have that I went out to the top of the hill about 4 minutes faster than last year. Then came back slightly slower. The wind accounts for the return difference and maybe 30 seconds of the outgoing gains. Still I cycled under 40 minutes (39:59) and that brought me into T2 way ahead of plan. And despite my preview note that finding 3 minutes on the bike was 'a big ask' it turns out I really am cycling that well that I made all of that and more.

T2 was very slick. I accidentally parked my bike on top of my running shoes which cost me a couple of seconds. Apart from that it was as smooth as I could hope for. 

On to the run and I knew the people I wanted to chase were well ahead. The bike route comes in along the run course and I could see they were well up the road even before I got in to transition. There were a couple of catchable targets though and my legs felt pretty good. I chased as hard as I could to close the gaps on the faster people and to pick off a couple of the weaker runners. As I reached the turn I had a look at the watch and started trying to do the maths for how fast I had to run back to get my 1hr 18 target and realised that I was actually on schedule to run close to 1hr 16. There was no one else left to chase but I kept working through to the end, remembering that people from other heats might be going faster*.  I felt surprisingly smooth on the run and went nearly a minute faster than last year.  

Targets for this race were to beat each of last years sector times and to go under 1hr 18.

Actuals were all faster (10 secs, 3mins 15, 56 secs) and total time was 1hr 16:08. 

That would have put me in contention with the people I want to be racing on their 2014 performances. They went faster this year though and I ended up still a couple of minutes behind them. I am still very happy with how I raced.

15th Overall. 8th Senior Male. 

*Some dodgy looking swim times from one of the earlier heats means two of them did move ahead of me on the standings.