We arrived late as usual to the race.
My darling father then realised that for the 400m swim he had put down a time of 9mins 20secs. Now it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that that's my 750m time so as you can imagine I wasn't very impressed. I had to struggle through a field of about twenty swimmers who were roughly 10mins slower than me! (No disrespect to them of course).
Hatty and I had already completed our daily session of childish bickering so as you can imagine I was 'well chuffed' with myself - not only before Hatty but first overall out of the water. I had my strongest discipline ahead, the bike, and I wasnt going to let anyone past me...
And they didn't.
My races all usually follow a common theme.
Swim - Good. Top Ten Out Of The Pool.
Bike - Work Really Hard. Feel The Burn.
Then it comes to the run.
You may have seen me running before...I'm the one who all the six and seven year olds overtake!
So I plodded along and as many of you will know I'm not the most competent runner in triathlon! So you can imagine my delight when I passed the two marshalls who were on their way to lay the turn cone!....
It suddenly struck me that you can't simply predict where to turn! (Unless your name is Superman Frank!)
So I had to wait as they ran to place it down.
I started to run back and to my amazement there was no Hatty or any other athletes close behind.
I staggered over the line leading from the start to take 1st and the grand sum of £15!!!
I think I'll stop writing I'm starting to get big headed!
The entries for this were so sought after that the organisers had to start refusing entries more than a fortnight before the event! I was looking forward to this Triathlon because it was promised to be well marshalled and organised. The weather was good and I was really looking forward to a good race. A car accident on the bike course delayed the start by about half an hour but everyone didn't seem to mind.
During the bike I was surprised to find my self getting lost and ending up beside a school. I did a U-turn and found some fellow competitors going round and round a roundabout with bewildered expressions and asking me which way to go. Eventually we chose one of the roads and shot off down it. Luckily it was the right one and the rest of the course continued without any more wrong turnings. During the run instead of getting lost, I got really bad stomach cramp so overall I didn't have a very good race. I wasn't the only one that had a bad race. Some got lost, like me, on the bike course. Some did extra lengths in the pool - times were reworked to compensate for the extra lengths though. At least one other person had cramps on the run - we wondered if it was the water on such a hot day.
A few days later I realised that the map of the course was different to the written instructions. We'd driven round most of the course but not the very first bit, which looked simple on the map but actually wasn't at all, as there was (presumably) an extra roundabout built after the map was drawn.
Despite the days events I would recommend this triathlon as one to enter because I'm told it's usually really well organised.