Thames Turbo 3

Woke up this morning to see that there was no rain as of yet, surely the weather report could not have been right and this time we were gonna get through the event without any rain?! Finally got the bike all prepped and made my way over to the swim start...starting the first wave (30th) definitely speeds things up because before you know it, you are in the pool and the race is on.

I was determined to beat my previous time on this occasion as I had been in the endless pool and been concenrating on my technique between TTT number 2 and 3. Got out the pool in 6:23 which is exactly the same as last time , albeit this time I was not as tired as I was before - I probably should have pushed it some more.

Going into T1 I was confident I would be faster here as I now had my shoes on the bike. It seemed to work as well...even though my actual swim times were the same, my recorded swim time (swim and T1) was about 30s quicker. The only problem was that my shoe came out the cleat at when I was trying to get it on...luckily it was in my hand so managed to get it on pretty quick and head off on the bike route. The milder winds today definitely made for an easier bike section and I found that I was feeling a lot better than last time. I constantly focused on the person in front of me and was able to draw in and pass quite a few on this occasion...finally came home in 32:41 for the bike...provisional results have this as the fastest bike split for the day!

T2 went as expected although the runners are proving increasingly difficult to get on..think I have seen some people putting some vaseline on the heels so may try this one day to see if it works. I had come into T2 with a chap from the Army (Scott Wiseman) and after chatting on the bike in the non-compete section he seemed quite confident about the upcoming run. His confidence was justifed though as he set off at a fair pace and pretty much left me for dust.. Got to the finish line in 1:00:48 which is a whole 2 minutes quiker than the last one and 3 on the first one. At least it looks like the hours of training are paying off