National Club Relay Championships 2007 - Nottingham

Last weekend witnessed one of the biggest ever mass migrations of Thames Turbo (my triathlon club) as we all headed north to Nottingham for the National Relay Championships. As with BananaMan, which you may recall reading about before, the National Relays are another event which don't subscribe to the normal swim, bike and run sequence of events.

The club relays basically allow clubs to enter teams of four people who all race as a team, the format of the race is along the lines of a tag team. The first man swims (400m), then he tags the next man who goes out and does his 400m until all 4 of you have completed the swim. Then the last swimmer tags the first man again who goes out to the bike. Once he has completed the bike, he tags the second man to head out and do his 15k. The last bit is a 5k run in the same format.

These relays have always attracted some of the best athletes in the country and this year was no exception. One of my team mates sent me a list with some of the other teams and it was clear that we were gonna be up against a who's who in the world of speedy triathlons...albeit, it does seem a little unfair when you are racing against sponsored teams which are not exactly clubs...as in, a sponsor will try and bring together a bunch of chaps who are pretty fast. There were a few teams of this sort of calibre on the start sheet, but we still thought that we would at least have a chance of being near the front.

Anyway, the swim finally got underway in the baking sun, never the best weather to be donning a thick piece of black neoprene..the sweat pretty much starts straight away. Anyway, our star swimmer came out really near the front of the pack and handed the baton (theoretical) to me...for some damage limitation. I think I lost about 2 spots in the water and by the time we had all got out, we were down to 18th position...things were not looking good. However, we had our secret weapon up our sleeves now...we are all pretty decent on the bike. After all 4 of us had cruised through our 15k sets of cycling, we had managed to move ourselves back up to 2nd place. To be honest, for Martin, James and myself, this was pretty much tantamount to winning the whole event..we all love the bikes, so this was a pretty impressive performance, especially considering the opposition. If I am honest, I have probably never ridden that hard on the road for about 20 minutes. When I finally came in to tag my team mate, I had snot all over the face and had a strange taste of blood in my mouth, not really sure what it was, but I am pretty sure that I had a fast ride!

My bars obviously slipped downwards somewhere round the course as well..




The other good thing about this format is that you get to wait around between your disciplines, hence, once I was off the bike, I had about an hour to get the legs ready for the run.

We started the run in 2nd place, but it was quite obvious as we looked across the lake to Dion that he was not going to be able to hold off the two competitors behind him. Credit where credit is due though, these chaps were all 15 minute 5k runners, so he was always up against it. By the time that I started my run, we were down to 4th but we were being chased down by some pretty decent teams, including the Army who, I must confess, I do like beating. I somehow managed to not lose any further places on the run and then neither did the two chaps after me.

In the end, we came home in 4th place and claimed a prize that we fabricated in our own minds....we were the first team of people who actually live in the same area and belong to a normal club, hence, we (in our own minds) won the Club Relays. We managed to hold off the Army and a few other top teams, including some semi-pro sponsored teams. It has to be said though, this was all down to some pretty good swimming and running, but our team's riding was quite amazing!