A training weekend and Europeans 2013 Qualifier Grendon Sprint Triathlon

Having not posted for a while I have quite a lot to talk about this post! I have been training really hard, having had a weekend away with Chester Triathlon Club in Malham, Yorkshire, have been ill with a cold and have done my first open water event of the year!

The beginning of May began as April ended weather wise, with lots of rain and plenty of wind. Not the ideal training conditions, but Grendon was fast approaching and so had to pile on the training and keep on plugging away. The training weekend in Malham took place over the bank holiday weekend and we were blessed with the best weather. I finally arrived in Malham at the Youth Hostel for around 5pm to a well earned half pint of Leffe. After the greetings and general merriment it was off to bed for an early start and a 8 mile off-road run behind the Youth Hostel and up towards Malham Tarn, the highest lake in England and a glacial lake. The group set off steadily, often walking at times and then split off with myself, Rob and Alison heading off for a shorter route back home. We decided to then head down the aptly named Gorsdale Scar, with warnings of a steep descent, but also with Alison and Rob's advice that the road back down was pretty steep and therefore this would be much more scenic. We wern't to know HOW much more scenic until we realised that we had to pretty much scramble down a waterfall. The picture below shows you exactly what we had to do, but in reverse, we were coming down, and I have to credit Alison with her knowledge of Rock climbing, as there was no way I would have ventured down that alone! So some pretty extreme off-roading adventure was had! The gentle 1.5 mile run home was full of the sighs of relief at having scaled down the waterfall!

Saturday afternoon was a pleasant enough ride with Alison and some of the lycra lads. It was only 40km, but I had to push my bike up the hills twice, with two 20% ascents being quite hard for me, and having already run in the morning it was fair to say that the last climb back from Settle to Malham was a pretty tough one. Sunday was a bigger ride which involved 9 of us ready and setting off at 9 am (or just after- thanks Tony!) and then onwards and pretty much upwards for most of the morning to Slaideburn to enjoy some rather lovely lunch. a great days cycling with lots of adventure, with 52 miles and over 1600m of climbing, that was quite enough 10-20% gradients to make me realise that really Rutland is quite flat!

It was a shame to end the weekend but I really enjoyed it, and I learned a lot about the hills of Yorkshire. It was great to get a 16 hour training week in, although my legs were absolutely shot to bits on the bank holiday Monday.The week following ended up with me sniffling and sneezing my head off on the Wednesday (after a tough training day on the Tuesday) which thus resulted in no training for Wednesday and Friday (a quick 5km run on Thursday night). I badly needed the rest and having a cold is certainly no fun. However by Saturday it began to lift and I found that Saturday's ride around to test the tri-bars was well-needed.

Sunday's race would involve an early start of 5am and a dip in Grendon Lakes. We had been warned earlier in the week about a potential shortening of the swim course if the temperature dropped, however the weather was quite fine over Friday and Saturday, so the course was still 750m for the swim. We had been told about a shortening of the run to 4.2km due to rutting and waterlogged ground, which did please me somewhat!

Pulling into the familiar sights of Grendon, I was quite excited and not really nervous at all. Having entered my name for the 25-29 female age group to try and qualify for the Europeans in Turkey next year (June 2013) I just wanted to go out and have a good race and try my hardest. I wasn't sure whether I would do well, I just knew that I wanted to beat my previous time set there in 2010 of 1:39 with a 17 minute swim. This was just something I knew I had to go out and beat. I also knew that I wanted to beat my bike time of 52 minutes and try to run as hard as I could.

Having 150 Ladies in a swim start is quite a lot really, however I was quite unperturbed and entered the (not-so-cold) water. In actual fact, lots of people were calling out how cold it was, but having been in Tallington the week before, this was positively tropical! I managed to work my way to the front of the main pack and was absolutely amazed when I exited the water (through the reeds) to see my watch display 12:25. I was gobsmacked that I had pushed that far, and I hadn't even gone really REALLY hard! A 200m run to transition taking the wetsuit off with the sunshine was a vast change to Lincoln. I managed a relatively quick transition and off I went onto the super fast (apart from two really smallish climbs) course of 23km. I was again really chuffed to come back off the course in a little over 46 minutes, again another time beaten, I was onto a winner!

The run had to be my least favourite part of the event as two laps totalling 4.2km, you can see the other athletes and try to chase them down. I was pleased to see that I was keeping up with certain girls in my age group, however the first lap came and the second lap started with a massive stitch in my side creeping over to my stomach. NOT GOOD! I was trying to keep the pace, but could tell I was slowing up a bit. It was soooooo painful, but I carried on, checking my watch periodically and to run into the finish line with Will and Stamford Tri supporters cheering me on.

I was totally made up with my time of 1:23:57- even though the course was 800m short, (probably an extra 3:30 on top of my time) I still had managed to smash my previous time on the course. I was utterly delighted (after a quick vomit on the finish line!). I did learn a lot from this race, and it was great weather, really good to be racing with friends and was lovely to catch up with people from my old club.

I defiantly learned that I need to find a drink that works for me- sloshing sounds coming from my belly on the run course was rather disconcerting. I was starving right before the race even though I had had breakfast, so I need to sort that out too. I need to still work on my biking, but having cut off what I did manage I was pretty made up with that one!

Well done to all of my friends who competed, I am now (not very) patiently awaiting confirmation of my qualification place from this event for the Europeans next year. I worked out that I was 4th fastest that had registered intent, and I was even more pleased that I had beaten two girls from my age group who had registered. It shows that things are improving and hopefully this year is the start of something good!

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Happy Training.

Kerry