The National Club Relay Championships

Some of you may recall that last year I travelled north to Nottingham for the Club Relay National Champs where the Thames Turbo team that I was in managed to get 4th place. Last weekend, the Thames Turbo masses headed back up north for another go at the relays, which, for those of you who aren't aware, involves a triathlon, but not in the normal sense. Teams are comprised of 4 athletes, which each one having to do all three disciplines. The difference here is that you get to have quite a long rest at various points of the race as all four do the swim in turn, followed by the bike in turn and then the run at the end. In the end, the 500m swim, 15k bike and 5k run takes over 3 hours for everyone to complete.

After last year's performance it was decided that our best chance of getting a medal at these National Champs would be to enter our strongest team in the mixed competition. So, I was in with two very fast ladies and James...who I only just beat in the club's sprint race champs. So, on paper, we had a good team.

It was decided that I would set off on the first swim, the notoriously rough swim (see photo below), and try to get us in a good spot for the next 3 people to carry on. The swim start was pretty frantic with arms and feet all over the place, but after a 200m or so, I was in a good area and could concentrate on trying to get out of the water as quick as possible. Personally, I did not enjoy the swim at all though, I just could not get into a good rhythm and kept on feeling that I was going a lot slower than normal - still, it was only 500m, so I was not gonna be losing that much time for the team.
Once I had swum, I tagged the next person and off they went for their 500m dash..


Once we had all been round, it was time for the last swimmer to tag the first cyclist, in this case me....(You can see me in this shot)

I had figured that we were in about 10th place so we had a lot of work to do on the bike to get us in to contention for this one. By the end of the first lap, I had clawed back a few places and then I kept on going to get some more back. By the time that we had all managed to finish the bike, we had managed to sneak our way all the way up to second place!

Out on the run, things were pretty tough. With a tailwind down one side of the rowing lake and then a stiff headwind coming back for the last 2.5km. My time was not great and I had let the leader get a bit further ahead but I was hopeful that my team mates would be able to pull them back.In the end, it got close, but not close enough - we came second by about 40s to a team from Manchester. We had managed to put a significant amount of time in to the 3rd place team however.

copyright david spencer/us2design 2008

So, at the end of the 3 hours and 19mins of racing, this was my first National Championship medal!




Just for fun, well not fun really, I did the whole thing again for the men's team. The second time round, I am pretty sure that I swam and biked faster, but the run was not that nice the second time round. The men's team did manage to finish 12th, which, considering the standard of the competition, is not that bad. We had been up to 7th spot at one point during the race as well.

All of this was followed by a night out in Nottingham with all the other Turbos. Going to a cheesy club after all that racing is very interesting....my legs were sore and was very grateful for the VIP pass which allowed us access to a quieter area (with seats)....think I am getting old. Don't get me wrong though, I did spend about 20mins in the techno room!