Part 7: The glorious finish, and what comes next

Reading, September 2017 10:20 am

I knew it had all come down to the 5.4k run.

I surged onto the final lap, sharing a quick wave and a smile with my family as I raced through the triathlon village.

I’d properly caught the triathlon bug – Since the tri season opened again in May I’d completed thirteen triathlons (including an Olympic distance), six organised runs (including a few 10ks) and a single 10k endurance swim. I loved knowing that there was always another event just around the corner, another chance to pinch a few seconds off the swim, or the run. I’d never imagined I’d be joining hundreds of others on 10k trail runs or charging up and down the London Olympics pool; but although all of these were cool, it was triathlons I loved. I loved the technical complexity of three different disciplines and three different sets of kit. I loved visiting places I’d never been to and covering a surprisingly large amount of the surroundings. I even loved breaking each discipline down to smaller and smaller chunks – racing to the first buoy, spinning up the biggest hill on the course, rounding the final bend and sprinting up the finishing straight.

By now, I was even managing to smile in a couple of finish photos – although of course this triggered anxious questioning of whether I’d had more to give…

The end result was that I’d improved hand over fist at almost every event. Ok, so I’d set a very low initial bar, but my times had literally tumbled – I’d managed to trim my sprint PB time down to 1:25:53 (a slightly short, flat course) and was hoping to smash the previous years’ time in reading (not flat, not short, long run). I had three targets to hit for this race – I was telling everyone I wanted to run sub 1:35 but super secretly I was wondering if I could run under 1:30 – but if nothing else I wanted to take 30 min of my time the previous year of 2:08:36. I’d practiced the ride a couple of weeks earlier, and despite some disastrous mechanical issues the time I’d managed to complete boded well for the event itself.

Stu and Matt were running again this year, and both were on course for great times. Stu had completed his first half Iron a few weeks earlier with style, taking nearly an hour off his target time and Matt was achingly close to qualifying for Britain in his age group, denied only by astoundingly poor navigation skills and a lack of understanding of how his gears on his bike worked. Barney, who had so resoundingly thrashed me on the bike and run legs wasn’t able to compete, having decided to ride non-stop from London to Edinburgh and back to London again instead. Everyone else had looked at him as if he had three heads, agreed that was stupidly hard and focused on our relatively simple next triathlons.

Using the multisport watch on my wrist I had a pretty good idea of how I was going and was calculating timings continuously as I ran. I’d taken over two minutes out of my time on the swim, and very nearly two minutes out of T1, putting me four minutes up on the timings from last year after the shortest discipline. I’d been shocked by how long the transition run to the bike mount line was – although I was still much much faster I hadn’t allowed the distance when calculating what was possible, and I was worrying about the impact this would have both ways.

Despite this, I’d then ridden the bike course over eight minutes faster – a huge chunk of time which shows just how badly I had struggled a year earlier, and t2 was another ninety seconds faster.

I knew it had all come down to the 5.4k run.

I wanted to hit those targets and was trying to work out which ones were still possible. I’d worked harder on the bike than maybe I should have done, and my legs were screaming again. All of my timings and calculations were thrown off by that niggling 0.4 of a kilometre. It didn’t sound like a lot, but it could add three or four minutes on to my run time and that made all the difference.

I raced through the water station, ignoring everything as I tried to keep the pressure on, and made the first left leading on to the gradual climb to the path round the back of the lake. The course was getting muddy and I slipped and slid my way round the telegraph poles that marked the centre of the track. I made the next left onto the back straight; I knew at this point that 1:30 was definitely out and refocused on beating 1:35, but the path was turning into treacle and my steps were getting shorter and shorter as I started to pay the price for a faster ride than I’d expected.

I rounded the penultimate corner and ran down the slight decline, lungs rasping, twisting with the path, and ducking around some of the lower branches… I was pretty sure I was going to miss 1:35 but had a few minutes extra if I were to trim 30 minutes from the previous years’ time. I burst onto the finish straight and sprinted for the timing gate.

As I grabbed for my sports watch and checked the time I was momentarily crushed to see that I’d only (only!) beaten 2016’s time by 29:51.

This disappointment only lasted a fraction of a second, and I suddenly broke out my biggest smile as I realised not only had I taken a huge chunk out of the time next year, but although I’d missed out on three goals I had managed to hit the super super secret fourth target.

The one I didn’t tell anyone, mostly because it made me look an arse.

I’d beaten Barney’s 2016 time by 8 seconds. That would do.

For the rest, well, there’s always Reading 2018. I have a strong suspicion Barney will be setting a new PB, so I’ve got some training to do.

What’s Next?

Well done! You’ve finished that first tri, and hopefully nodded wryly at various points as things happened to you that reminded you of things in this book. I’m sure you smashed your targets out of sight and if nothing else, I’m certain you set a PB.

What happens now? It’s a fair bet you may want to do another. Ride that high, pick your next triathlon and get one booked in as soon as possible. Try not to go for one that’s too far out as you want to push on from the dizzy fitness heights you’ve already achieved. If it’s the end of the season, you may have a while to wait, but have a look at duathlons or 5 or 10k runs that genuinely run throughout the year so you have a target to aim for.

There are a number of event aggregators on the internet that will find you a list of events near you; or magazines that pick out some of the biggest and the best regardless of distance. You may even find yourself booking an event in a different country (be warned, this can be a tougher sell to the other half than you may expect and it often costs you more to put your bike on a plane than it did you, but oh my god what a brilliant way to schedule something you are going to look forward to!).

You may want to join a club; even if you don’t it may be a good idea! I joined a tri club that a few of my friends were already members of; I was hugely intimidated to start with and found it really hard to match faces to names when they are all wearing wetsuits and swimming caps, but although my tiny club has probably around 10% of its member list at GBR level, they are so warm and friendly and inclusive that I’ve got a huge amount from what they’ve brought to bear.

Most significantly, they have a winter training program that means although I was only hoping to ‘really not lose much fitness over the winter’ I’ve come out significantly better than when I went in and really ready to attack the new season. The British Triathlon Federation can point you at a club near you from their website.

After that you may find yourself almost casually entering ultra endurance events, or off road triathlons, or pushing a longer distance (the terror comes later, when you realise what you did under the hypnotic influence of a facebook link to an event a friend is doing that ‘looks like a laugh’).

You may find yourself discussing the merits of foam rolling, or CSS tests, or how many gels an hour you can eat before suffering a gastric apocalypse to end all apocalypses.

Or you may just slide that hard won medal into a drawer on your bedside table and never talk about it again – and you know what, that’s fine; because you still beat every single person that’s thought about tackling a triathlon and deciding not to.

Bet you don’t though….