I had decided to enter this race to just get a feel for what that sort of distance felt like in one go, it was pretty close to IM distance, so a fair representation. Starting with a bunch of other people would also give it more of race feel. Prior to starting, I was not really sure what to do, whether to race it as a swim and just see how quick I could go, or, alternatively, swim as if it were the IM swim. In the end, I did a bit of both. I started quite quickly but then decided to just settle in to a pace and see how that felt after a while. I was swimming in a small pack and this helped me keep the same effort, I am less sure how well it helped in terms of direction - I don't think any of us were sighting that well.
Once I went round the final bend and i could see Kingston Bridge, I decided to put a bit more effort in, I started to kick a bit more just to wake the legs up really.
Was out in 54:02 which was okay I think. I had privately wanted to go a bit quicker than that, but it at least should mean that a sub 60 minutes swim is on the cards in Copenhagen.
Cowman was supposed to be the one middle distance race that I was going to do before the IM in a couple of months. For some reason, the whole race just crept up on me and, as such, I didn't really have much of a chance to worry about it or have any preconceptions about how I would do. I thought I had the endurance and things had been going okay training wise, my one concern was that going quite hard for that long might be a bit of a shock to the system. My main aim of the day was to get it all done in less than 4hr30 - to me the bike course looked very hilly so I didn't think I would have a chance of riding that fast.
The race started quite well with a nice swim, I had chosen, perhaps not the fastest place to start, but it meant that the whole first 400m were pretty much pain free with little in the way of mingling with the others. Round the first buoy and I just followed some feet for a while, got bored of that so tried to go round the outside and then stayed there for a bit. Tired to spend the last 500m or so just trying to get a bit further up the field. All in all, good to be out in under 28 and I had hardly kicked at all, so good news for the legs.
When I exited the swim, I could see one club mate just ahead of me and I heard the commentator call out about another club swimmer. This just reassured me that I had not lost a bunch of time to people in the swim.
I had looked at the profile of the bike course in the week leading up to the race and had seen that there seemed to be a lot of hills. This did not make too much sense as previous times were relatively quick. In the end, I actually thought it was on eof th best courses I have ridden on. There were some good sections to just get your head down and then there were a few hills along the way. The sad thing about the bike course was the amount of drafting that was taking place, especially when this is right at the front of the field and thus where the medals will be distributed. Personally, I ended up in a situation whereby there were about 5 or 6 people who I would pass on every piece of flat road and then stay ahead the whole time. Every time I looked back though, they were all clumped together and doing a very good job of looking like a team time trial outfit. They would then catch me on the hill and I would have to put in a big effort to pass all seven of them as soon as we were over the top.
When I came in from the bike, I got a bit of a shock as the commentator announced that I was in about 4th place. I couldn't quite work out how I had managed to do that. I did not think that I had cycled that hard but I thought that after the swim there would have been a lot more people up the road from me. In my over-excitement of coming in from the bike in such a high place though, I made one of my worst ever triathlon decisions. I always used to run without socks, but recently, I had started to wear them pretty much for all my runs. So, why I ditched them before setting out on a hot half marathon is anyone's guess.
The run felt hard from the start, the legs were more tired than they felt on the bike. The hill out of the park was a bit of a killer as well. I figured I only had to get to the top and there would be some downhill etc. When the course did level out, I tried to get into a good rhythm but the one thing I had started to notice was that there was something going wrong with the feet. I could feel some blisters developing and with some 15k left on the clock, I knew this would not be pretty. After about 7k I stopped to try and put a blister plaster on....I had remembered to take them. Anyway, the act of sitting down brought cramp to the leg so I got back up and carried on for another couple of k's. Eventually, I stopped again and put some on....pretty sure they came straight off as the pain just came back straight away. Anyway. in summing up, the run was rubbish. I got passed by a fair few other Turbos as well so I went from leading the club champs to about 6th in about 10k.
The annoying thing is that the blister incident just meant that I did not have a good prep race for the IM. That race is now almost exactly a month away...
At this moment in time, I don't think I will be doing another IM once Copenhagen is done. The whole training and preparation side of it is just a bit annoying and time consuming I find and I kind of feel that it will be hard to do it justice with the amount of time that I have available to me. We'll see...maybe if I finish in a decent time, my views will change. It is just that at this stage, I think I much prefer trying my best to go quicker over shorter distances.
