Racing in Carlisle

So on Sunday I decided that I would get up at some stupid time in the morning in order to travel down to Carlisle to take part in the Carlisle Sprint Triathlon. I was traveling down by train and it has to be said I was very impressed with how easy it was to take my bike especially on the virgin trains, which I didn’t even know could take bikes until a couple of weeks ago. When I arrived in Carlisle I had an hour before needing to register so decided to take some cheeky photos of the bike against random brick walls, trust me it looked nice.

I arrived to register at 11 and found that I would be starting at 1:50 so I decided to take a wee look around the course. The race was a 500 meter swim with a 21k cycle and then a 5k run to finish. However when it made it over to the pool i realised that it was only a 20m pool which would mean lots of turns which I’m not great at (anyone can verify this that’s seen me swim). Anyway the time did pass eventually and after a couple of really great chats with people who had come for the event it was soon time for me to get kitted up. This was also my first time trying to put my tri-suit and after a zip issue last week at Inverurie and with it being a back zip it definitely was one of the harder struggles of the day.

Anyway enough about zip troubles and more about the race. This week I was looking forward to the reduction from a 750m swim to a 500m swim as last week at Inverurie I had started strongly but had major issues in terms of keeping the pace up. I was first off in my lane of three with an estimated swim time of 10mins and things went really well and apart from one person deciding to do breast stroke in the lane I managed to pass both the other people in my lane three times. I was out the pool and into T1 within 9:05 which was great as is probably meant that my swim was around 8mins which made all the pool sessions in the week leading up to this very worthwhile. Transition was pretty quick however I did have a bit of trouble getting clipped into the pedals. The bike route was great almost as flat as a pancake on the way out apart from one steep incline which I absolutely nailed for once in terms of getting in the right gear allowing me to get past that person that was trying to crunch down their gears. On the way back in I managed to pass another couple of people with the tri-bars coming very handy due to the small head wind that was blowing straight into my face most of the way back. Soon I was back and ready to transition, this time doing the opposite of Inverurie by leaving it too late in getting out of my shoes for a flying dismount. I did manage it but only just before the dismount line, I also managed to overrun where I was meant to rack my bike so all in all this bode well for the run as it seemed like my body just didn’t want to stop. My T1 + Bike + T2 time was 37:31 but now it was time for the run. I was fine for the first part as it was flat again but really struggled after what can only be described as what felt like at the time the big brother to the Sports Institute hill at the back of the track at Uni. I did manage to pass two more people though and during the race hadn’t been passed by anyone so as I finished my run in 22:52 I was feeling knackered but pretty happy with my performance.

My final time was 1:09:28.4 and much to my surprise when the official results were released I found that I had my first top ten finish!!! Coming in 7th in the Male Senior category (As you can probably tell I’m pretty pleased with that). It was a great day and the organisers and stewards were amazing throughout the day and deserve a big thank-you from all that took part. It was my first time racing down at Carlisle and I will definitely be back next year.