THE GOOD BUCK

I know, I’ve already covered it; it was stupidly hilly, uneven underfoot, hotter than a chilli in a microwave, and we  had to ford a stream, so ran the last eight or so kilometres with soaked, very heavy feet.

Now though, I have the race statistics!

I said it was tough, here’s how tough: there were 610 people started the race, only 383 finished it!  My time, which for a flat, road race would have been lamentable at 4.09:25, was good enough to put me 85th on the day. Which was 28th in my age category (Male, 40-50). These are things that please me. As did outlasting a guy with a ‘100 Marathons Club’ T-shirt on. Hehehe. He was good most of the way around but I had him (ooo-er, Mrs!) in the last 6k.   

I said in my last post that the swim was the thing that was really worrying me. The estimated time at the pace I was doing was 2.01, when I only had 2.15 to swim, change, and be out riding. Also that I was concerned I would fade, and be even slower over the last mile. I said I was going to try to get a 2 hour swim session in on Friday evening.

This I did. I was, as ever, a bit late so I didn’t get swimming till eight minutes past eight. This was a concern as I thought I would need at least 1.53, possibly the full two hours. Not drinking has advantages though. Being a Friday night when I got into the pool it was empty! Presumably everyone else was busy drinking/ having a life. This meant I could put my head down and swim without having to constantly check that I wasn’t about to punch someone in the face (they are not understanding about it. Me, me, me!)

I used my new-fangled ring-watch-lap-counter jobby to accurately count the lengths. At 40 lengths (a smidge over 1.2 miles, or half distance) it was only 9 o’clock! Go me! I set to with a will, found a decent rhythm and carried on. I was worried that I would tire and run out of time before I’d done the second half. Cracked on and did the full 2.1 miles in 1.43!

That’s right, this was my long weekend! Yay!

On Friday I went for a 1½ mile swim, 112 mile ride, followed by a 13 mile run.

Obviously a lot short of the actual distances. I need a 2.4 mile swim to start, but I’m slow and only had 90 minutes of pool time, 14 of which I wasted by turning up late.I did it in 1 hour 16. I did the same distance in 1 hour 11 minutes two days before, so it was a slow one even by my poor standards. I think my arms were still tired.

Just stumbled across this;

Last night I was trying to catch up on all my happenings but was too tired and had to go to bed after updating my training. There is other stuff; for instance I found out that the race results for the Marazion Middle Distance triathlon, although displayed as ****** in the results boxes, tell you your time if you hover your cursor over them. Joy! So I now know that even given the very hilly and windy course, with no motivation and not really trying (just finishing with my head in that state was an achievement) I did the fifty six mile ride in 3.19:56 and the run in 1.48:37. To put that in perspective; for a flat race I was only expecting a time of about 3.40 and my time for the Warrington half marathon (same distance, but flat and  without the ride before it) was 1.43.38. That was a very pleasant surprise.

Today I got a nasty surprise though; six weeks until the Outlaw! Aaaaarrgggghhhhh! Panic!