Thames Turbo - Race 4 (Series Final)

For those of you who have been reading the blog for a while, you will recall that way back on a cold, supposedly spring morning I ventured into the world of triathlon for the first time. Back then, doing the triathlons was just going to be a bit of fun with no real ambition to see myself anywhere near the front. However, in this first race I surprised even myself by finishing in 13th place, with a time which was way faster than I had been thinking I would have been able to achieve. Pretty much from this point, things got a bit more serious as I realised that I had some talent to compete - the bank balance on the other hand wishes that I had just been a mediocre competitor with no real lofty ambitions where you feel the need to spend a hell of a lot of cash to shave seconds off your time.

Over the course of this season there were another 3 of these Thames Turbo events, each falling on the bank holidays over the summer. After doing some serious training between events 1 and 2, I was able to shave another 2 minutes off my time and this occasion I finished in 5th place - a marked improvement and everything seemed to be heading in the right direction. Event 3 saw me finish 6th but this time I recorded the fastest split for the bike and also managed to shave another 90s or so off the last time.

When the last in the series came round yesterday I was determined to do one thing, and one thing only - that was to break the hour in this event. I think that in this season it had only been done by less than 10 people so it was going to be a balls out affair to see if I could finally do it.

My biggest concern from the last event was that, even after all of my swimming training, my times for the swim were the same in the second and the third event. I knew from my training in the pool that I should be able to go a bit faster and in a dream scenario I hoped for a 6min swim, followed by a good bike section and a sub 20min run.

Getting to the race proved to be an absolute nightmare on the day. I had to make my own way down to Hampton and figured that it would be good to do this on the bike - a 30k ride in the morning would be a nice little warm up for the legs. However, 5k's from home I got my first puncture with a tub....for the non-cyclists out there, tubs are not the best things to change - they are glued on to the rim and this makes them decidedly hard to get the things off. I basically spent about 15 minutes on the side of the road trying to budge this tub and it just seemed to be going nowhere. Finally, I did get the thing off though and put my spare on...only to realise that the CO2 cannister that I was intending to use to pump the tyre up had obviously been bumped and as a result had no compressed air in. As you can imagine, this was a pretty low point - I was 5k's from home, I had a flat and I was staring at the prospect of missing the last in the series...compounded by the knowledge that I knew there were series prizes up for grabs. I started the long walk home though and eventually saw a taxi firm whom I thought I better ask to see how much it would be to get down to Hampton. £40 later I was at the start line and my tyre was good to go, thanks to the loan of a pump from a mate.

The swim went really well and I timed myself getting out the water in about 6 minutes dead...from this point on, I felt confident that I was on for a good race. I darted through T1 and passed a couple of people who had started a minute or so ahead of me in the swim...I had also managed to catch my 15s man in the swim.

As soon as I got on the bike though I realised that my computer was not working, it had obviously been knocked in the cab or something so I quickly realised that I was going to need to do this one on feel, rather than using the computer to monitor my speed. I had strapped on the HR monitor for this race though because I was convinced that I had started to slack in the runs of recent so I had set myself the target of slowly building it up to 180+ once I got to the run. Back on the bike though, I felt strong after the first turn, although I could not see anyone ahead who had started in front of me in the swim. I knew I had passed a couple in T1, but I was expecting to see a few more on the horizon. About 10k's in, I finally I saw one of the Thames Turbo chaps ahead of me and I knew that it was Roger, a chap who had beaten me on all the previous occasions. I pushed hard to catch him and eventually overtook him - knowing that I would need to put some time into him because I was aware that he was a much better runner than me.

In the end the bike leg felt pretty good all the way round and in hindsight, I kind of think that I could have pushed it a bit harder. By the time I was finished though I was up with a few people who I knew had started a few minutes ahead of me so I was quite confident that, even without the computer, I had posted a good bike split for the day. Now it was time for some running and on all the previous occasions, my legs have felt pretty dire off the bike on this course.

T2 went really well and I headed out on the run ahead of the eventual series winner..I had already put about 90s into him, so it was just a case of how fast he could run now and whether he would be able to claw back some of the bike time he had lost. Low and behold, he came flying past me in the first km and I tried to stick with him for a while but he seemed way to pacy for me. I did feel good on the run though and my km splits were about what I was hoping for..the two that I recorded properly were a 3:45 and 3:47, which should have given me a sub 20 run quite easily.

In the end I made it inside the hour by a whole 8 seconds. I recored the fastest bike split for the second time on the trot, and 20s quicker this time. The run was not spectacular though, coming in just over 20 minutes - albeit that includes the T2 time.

In the end I managed to pick up a couple of awards today. I was the Age Group Winner for the series in the 20-29 category and I also managed to finish 5th overall in the series of 4 races where they take the best three out of the four results. All in all, not a bad day in the office. Even managed a comment on TriTalk by the race organiser " Totally impressed by Richard's performance this year. Talk about natural ability! Then add in some serious training and you have yourself the holder of the record on the bike course"