Welcome to Hell (Bala Middle Distance 2011)

This was my first race of the season and my fourth time competing in Bala Middle Distance Triathlon – which is a big proportion of the 9 triathlons I’ve done!  It is always a good race to test where I am compared to previous seasons and what shape I’m currently in.  

Dark clouds ... a sign of things to come!

Lynn and I decided that camping in Bala for the weekend would be a good idea, so off we set on Friday, pitching our tent in glorious sunshine, which was swiftly followed by a downpour, and then sunshine again!  In the intermittent sunshine I went out for a bike ride to check out some of the course before we were joined at the campsite by Jon Moorhouse (who was doing his first ever Middle Distance triathlon) & family. 

Charity Swim

On the Saturday, we all decided to enter the Charity swim.  Lynn and Jon would be doing the 750m swim, then after a quick swap of children and a dog, Hannah and I would be swimming the 1500m. 

The wind was up and the weather was a bit miserable, until just before the swim start, when the sun came out!  Lynn (in her first ever open water race) and Jon battled through the waves to record great performances in testing conditions.  

No more waves!

I didn’t appreciate how hard the water was to swim in until I entered the chilled water and started the race.  The waves were unsettling the water and making it very difficult to swim in.  I headed off pretty steady, making my way through the field as I headed towards the buoys.  By the time I got the second buoy (the supposed turnaround point) I was in third place, on the feet of 1 & 2.  My plan was to sit on their feet until about 200m to go and then go for the win!  However, confusion struck!  I started to go left to turn around the buoy but the canoeist and the first two swimmers carried on!  A group of swimmers, including myself, stopped and treaded water for a while discussing the course with a second canoeist!  A few swimmers went straight on, ignoring the crowd that was forming, whilst others made the decision to ignore the canoeist and turn at the buoy.  I decided to follow the lead swimmers – who must have been 100m ahead by now – and do this version of the course!  

Bike set up and ready to go!

I swam on, trying to concentrate on technique, whilst waves crashed all around me.  I ended up 8^th overall – but in reality it was 4^th as four swimmers ahead of me had cut the course short and turned at the second buoy.  It was a pretty slow time too – finishing in 25 minutes which reflected both the time spent treading water and the bouncing water conditions. 

The rest of the day was spent trying to get warm, sorting out my stuff for the morning – bike, kit, gels etc – and eating!

Pre-Race

The following morning I unzipped the tent at 6am to be confronted by fog!  It was freezing.  I wrapped up, ate my porridge and nutella and went through my pre-race prep before heading off with Lynn and Jon to the race.  On the way over, it started to rain.  Oh great.

All smiles before the start

Met up with a few of the MerseyTri guys (Jamie, James, Andy) all kitted out in the new MerseyTri kit.  I didn’t hang about in transition, preferring to take shelter in the sports hall where I was body marked and then picked up my timing chip.  I left setting up transition until the last moment as I didn’t want all my stuff to get wet! Ha!!

Swim

I was one of last to get in the water, not that I wasn’t ready, rather I didn’t want to hang around in the cold water for too long.  I made it to the front row, about the middle of the line, when the start hooter went.  Ideally I wanted to move further to the left to get on the feet of the fast swimmers.  Hey ho. 

Numb hands and feet!

Off I went into some clear water.  As I really wanted to draft I made my way to the left.  I was swimming with a couple of other guys who were swimming at more or less the same pace but I couldn’t see others in front of me.  Doh!  I’d missed my draft.  Then, after about 600 metres, the tri-Gods must have heard my plea and sent a faster swimmer to come past me on my right.  I left the other guys around me, picked up the pace and jumped on his feet.  This was brilliant!  I was drafting right on his feet, (touching them a bit too much really) all the way until the turn buoy – when we had to return back to transition.  That’s when the waves hit!  If I thought yesterday’s swim was tough, that was because I hadn’t experienced anything like today’s swim before.  I was bouncing over the water and felt sick.  Technique went out of the window.  Legs started kicking.  Arms swinging.  I was battling the water.  

I lost the feet in front of me too.  He had decided to take an unorthodox route to the finish, which although directly in front of us, involved a lot of left and right hand turns.  Maybe he was doing this to keep warm – because the water at 13 degrees was very cold!  I was sighting regularly and knew I was heading in the right direction so kept up my lone battle with the waves.  I picked up a set of feet again with about 400m to go and drafted to the finish, overtaking the swimmer in front at the pontoon.

What a swim!

I exited the water in 33 minutes – which was 4 minutes slower than last year, but in a much higher position, exiting the water in the top 10.  In hindsight, the tougher swim probably contributed to a higher overall finish position and one of the reasons fewer people than normal passed me on the bike.

Transition

As soon as I got onto the pontoon, I started taking my wetsuit off, and within seconds of reaching transition it was off.  Excellent! However I had to deal with the rest of transition with numb hands.  In transition lay my long sleeved MerseyTri cycle jersey, which I had left there to put on if it was really cold.  It was really cold.  The jersey eventually went on, although the zipp was a bit fiddly when your fingers don’t work.  Sunglasses (!) on.  Helmet on.  Grab bike.  Boom!

Bike

I made my way out through Bala where the rain seemed to get worse.  I spun up the first hill – but it seemed harder than it should have been.  Put those thoughts away Bryan!  Onto the flat roads and down on my aerobars I noticed my HR monitor was not synced up with my Garmin.  I fiddled with it for a minute (brain had frozen) then decided to do the bike by feel and perceived effort rather than HR.  Well, I’ve never done that before!  Back onto my aerobars and moving quite nicely, not being overtaken (this was very unusual!), keeping my breathing and effort in check.  I was staying on my aerobars for as long as possible going uphills, spinning as easy a gear as possible.  The cold was now getting worse.  I had numb fingers and feet.  The MerseyTri long sleeved cycle jersey was doing the trick though as my torso was quite ‘warm’!  

Up and over the ‘10% hill’ and onto the descent.  That was scary!  The strong crosswinds caught my deep section wheels and started taking me to the right.  It was very wet underneath and I was going quite fast.  I tried braking but only succeeded in skidding.  I let the bike go a little, crossed the white line and onto the other side of the road.  Woah!  I managed to get it under control and return to my side of the road before a couple of cars and caravans approached.  From then on all descents had my full attention, keeping my hands near to the brakes!  After the left turn, I hit some very fast speeds, which could only mean one thing ... nightmare headwind on the way back!  I counted the riders that had reached the turnaround point and were coming back at me – and it appeared that I was in the top 20.  At the half way point, assuming the second half of the course had as much up and down as the first half, it appeared that I was on for a 2 hours and 30 minute bike split!  I was racing well. 

At this point, nutrition and hydration was going well.  Having a good gulp from my gel bottle every 20 minutes, washed down with some water seemed to be doing the trick.  However, at the turnaround, I picked up a water bottle and tried to squeeze into my front aero bottle but the top kept shutting and it was proving difficult to fill up on the move.  Rather than stop, I drank as much as I was able to over the next kilometre and then through the bottle away!!  I still had about one third of a bottle of water left – surely that would be enough?!  I started to feel a bit bloated with all of the gel, which was a sign that I was either having it too regularly (maybe every 25 minutes would have been better?) or that I was putting too much effort into the bike so I wasn’t digesting it properly.  Either way, at the next 20 minute bleep on my watch I didn’t take any gel, resuming regular nutrition at the next beep instead.    

Cycling back towards home I saw some very cold and wet athletes coming towards me and heading for the turnaround.  Spotted a few clubmates, all looking very cold – but very focussed!  Into the wind, on a slight incline, and the legs started to cramp due to the cold!  Great!  I spoke too soon about a great bike leg.  I eased off a little to spin the legs and relieve the cramps, when two or three people passed me at this point.  I kept plugging away pedalling easy gears.  The hills came and I was cramping in both legs as I was climbing!  Not good!!

To compound my misery, my chain came off as I was climbing and as I got off my bike to sort it out, my legs cramped up again!  I had to spend a few moments stretching the muscles, before fixing the chain and mounting the bike.  In the meantime I was passed by another rider.

The next few miles were tough on my legs – with constant cramps.  Maybe that’s why the 10% hill (which is more than 10% by the way!) was tougher than last year!  Onto the last 20k of the bike, which was still hard with the headwind hitting, and I finally managed to shake off the cramps and able to hit some higher speeds – at last!  It was pretty lonely riding though with no riders in front and none behind me until I managed to catch a rider struggling up the last hill going into Bala.  A controlled descent into town and I was back into transition.

Transition

Not many bikes in transition

Back into transition and I was amazed at how few bikes were there.  I really was having a good race.  T2 started slowly as I couldn’t take my helmet off!  My numb hands struck again!  A marshal came over and helped take it off for me, then stood over me whilst I finished transition (to make sure I was ok I think).  I then heard over the tannoy that 17 riders had DNF’d and were stuck on the bike course and could people help bring them and their bikes back.  Wow!

Run

As I headed out of T2 I couldn’t feel my feet!  I cramped almost immediately too.  This wasn’t good!!  Stretched out the muscles again, before I plodded at 5 minute per k pace, hoping that the feeling would return in my feet before long!  I fixed the link between my HR monitor and my Garmin and was running nicely in zone 2, as the pace gently creeped up to 4.45k pace.

That was tough!

Experience of this race tells me to expect the leaders to come back passed me early on the run.  However, I reached the 6k mark before the first athlete went passed, going the other way.  This meant I was within 8k of the lead.  That sounds a lot, and it is, but it is the closest I’ve been yet!  I then reached 7k before the 3^rd person had passed me.  This meant that most of the people ahead of me weren’t actually that far ahead of me.  As always, though, the Bala run course takes its toll and I was soon struggling up some of the hills.  My pace slowed up the hills to the turnaround, which I reached in 51 minutes and change.  Once I hit the turnaround, I picked up the pace and made my way to the finish.  I saw Andy and Jamie both running strong in the opposite direction and knew my run would have to be strong on the second half to hold them off.  For the most part it was.  Slow going up hills, but I maintained a pretty consistent pace, reeling in a couple of runners in the last couple of k’s.

Good performance ... all things considered!

I finished the race in 5 hours and five minutes and in 46^th place overall, and whilst 7 minutes slower than last year I did improve by 139 places!  For the first time ever I didn’t get beaten by a female athlete!  

To put the race, and my performance, into context, the 2^nd place athlete finished 20 minutes slower than he did last year. Suddenly my seven minute time difference doesn't feel too bad!

Outside perspective

The race director wrote in his race report “After all the years of good weather at Bala we had ‘A Perfect Storm’ with a number of factors coming together for a horrid day for racers and logistically for organisers and the crew. The constant rain was predicted but the unpredictability of the wind was not, above all the cold (4 degrees in June!) caught people out in a middle distance race exposing people to the elements for longer than normal. Frozen from a long swim (and longer than normal due to the waves), unable to warm up on the bike, wind chill on a cold wet body, too scared to push hard on the bike because of the wind, unsuitable clothing for the conditions (full winter kit was essential) contrived maliciously. The poor weather sent caravans and holiday traffic home early causing problems on the roads”.