BUCS Sprint Distance Triathlon Championships

The team from Leeds Triathlon Centre

Where to start!?
Last weekend was the BUCS Sprint Triathlon Championships held in Calne, Wiltshire, and I travelled down on Saturday with a team from the Leeds Triathlon Centre (including both University of Leeds and Leeds Met athletes). After a nice evening meal with the team I got a fairly early night at the Swindon Campanile, while room mate Jago (Leckie) sent endless snapchats to Gordon, among others, providing valuable entertainment as we couldn't get the TV working! We rose relatively early and Jago and I went for an easy 10 minute jog to loosen off the legs as we weren't racing until mid afternoon. Last weekend I raced at a similar time in the afternoon and did a ten minute jog first thing in the morning which seemed to work well for me, so I tried to replicate the run, again including a couple of pick ups to move the legs up towards race pace.

We arrived at the event HQ and registered with plenty of time to spare, and I met my Mum who'd driven down that morning to support me. She'd kindly brought my race wheels which I lent to Jago, as well as some food for me and an all important piece of equipment: a small brass adapter used to pump up a disc wheel as a regular pump won't fit onto the valve. As the 750m swim leg of the race was held in a pool at St Mary's School Sports Centre, the race had to be started in waves with your estimated swim time used to seed the quicker swimmers into the final waves. My wave was the final one, so I started at four o'clock, and shared a lane with one other athlete who set off one minute behind me; these intervals aimed to ease congestion on the bike course which has previously had drafting problems. I went off at a good pace on the swim and was feeling strong, whilst keeping an eye on the other lanes I spotted a pink-hatted athlete who'd gone off slightly quicker than me so I tried to stick somewhere level with him. After a couple of hundred metres, on checking again, I had left the other swimmer behind and soon the swim was over, and I emerged from the pool into the transition area in 8.47, 13 seconds quicker than my predicted time**, whipping my hat and goggles off as I ran! I  was leading my wave comfortably, and later found out this was the second fastest swim split of the day. I quickly stepped through my race belt and put on my helmet and  sunnies before making the lengthy run out to the road where the mount line was. I quickly got into riding hard; knowing that drafting had been a problem in previous years I wanted to put as much distance between myself and any potential chase group. I rode hard and for the first ten km of the 25km ride I didn't feel great; my hamstrings seemed a bit sore, in hindsight that might be due to the slightly different position on the tt bike, but I just focused on pushing harder with my calves and quads to maintain the gap I had. The second half of the bike was into a headwind as we looped back towards the transition, and I began to feel stronger despite the wind, and soon was running back into T2. I have to make thanks at this point to my childhood sporting hero Kieran (green shoes) Rowlands! He lent me his time trial bike for the event, including a disc wheel, which should be faster than my regular road frame. Aside from the more aerodynamic frame and wheels, the bike has bar end shifters, which means I can remain in a comfortable aero position whilst changing gear, rather than having to switch back to the drop handlebars if I'd used my road bike with clip on tri bars. So thanks Kieran, you're still a hero!

Quickly into my running out of T2.

I had a solid T2 and was soon out onto the run, feeling that regular jelly legs feeling! I ran past my mum who indicated that my team mate Liam, who I considered one of the biggest threats in the previous wave, was 90 seconds slower than me to that point in the race. This was good news as I knew he was running really well and may take quite a bit of time out of me. I pushed on and focused on the strong relaxed posture I've been working on in training, and was making good progress. The route was an out and back course with a twisty section near transition/finish area, before coming onto a long straight-ish section to the turn around point.
I began to tire a little before the turn point, and was glad to loop around the cone signalling half way, grabbing a cup of water from the marshals as I went. I had resisted the temptation to look behind, but could now see the runners coming the opposite way along the path, but it was difficult to guess how far behind they were in time, and I didn't actually know who'd set off when I did, and who was a minute behind! My legs really started to hurt on the way back, and I was glad of a slight downhill section as the route wound its way through a housing estate. As I approached the school again, Mum gave me another time check, I was now only 30 seconds ahead of Liam, who went on to get the quickest run split of the day by some 36 seconds! I just gave it my all to the line, my legs screaming at me, and hadn't long crossed the line and removed my timing chip when my teammates looked on the live results screen and informed me that I'd won! I was quick to point out that I was only leading, and some athletes set off a minute behind me. What felt like just over a minute after I finished, Cameron Milne finished who had started a minute behind me; in fact he'd finished 1:09 behind me, meaning I'd beaten him and won the event! After many congratulations from friends, teammates and various other people, we looked more closely at the results to see I'd won by a mere 8 seconds from Sam Wade, a Cardiff Met Uni athlete, with Cameron a further one second behind! It turned out that on swim, bike and run alone, my times would only have positioned me third, which once again showed the importance of transitions! All those random "tranny training" sessions in car parks with Uncle Matt seem to have paid off (not my real uncle, Matt Backhouse who helped me progress in triathlon). Unfortunately, teammate and housemate Liam had been pushed down into 4th position only 15 seconds away from a medal! But with the help of another strong performance from Richard Anderson in 7th, we had sealed the Team Gold medal for University of Leeds, beating the previously dominant Loughborough team! Our squad had some other strong performances, and I was particularly impressed by Phil Sesemann, who finished 15th in a tough field for his first triathlon, complete with a quick run split, even after a hard bike.

Team Gold for University of Leeds. Liam Lloyd and myself collecting the medals, unfortunately Rich Anderson had to rush off to a wedding, so missed the presentation! 

I'd just like to finish with a few "thank yous": to the event organisers for putting on a great event (complete with weather), my coach Rob Harvey who prepared me for the event and came down with the team for the weekend, to everyone who supported me along the route and afterwards, and finally, to my Mum who drove all the way down to support me, and then drove me home again! Cheers Mum! (My former coach Mark Walsh will be proud of me for this acknowledgement). I'm now having a couple of days off to recover from a very pleasing two races in two weekends, and then will begin to build again towards the next race!

** I have a (minor) complaint on this topic! My estimated swim time of 9:00 was the slowest in the final wave, and as several athletes in the wave before had the same estimate I counted myself lucky to be in the final wave, which should contain most of the race contenders. However, other Universities/athletes don't seem to understand the point of swim estimates for seeding, and just enter stupidly fast swim times in order to be in the final (and theoretically most competitive) wave. At least two athletes in my wave were more than a minute off their entry time and at least five others that I spotted swam at least 30 seconds slower. It is annoying that I nearly missed out on the last wave and in the end, 6 of the quickest 12 swimmers were in slower waves, simply because people lied about their swim ability! Surely a suitable penalty could/should be imposed here in order to deter people from ridiculous over-estimation, maybe adding the difference from previous years onto people's estimated swim times, so that they end up in slower waves. For example, if a swimmer estimated 8:30 and swims 9:15, if the next year they "estimate" a time of 8:30 they should have the 45 seconds added on and be seeded with 9:15? Rant over!

All photos courtesy of Rob Harvey