A Lovely Jubilee Weekend and Woodball Shower triathlon more like!

What a weekend! It was glorious to have 4 whole days off work to train, race and to have a really good time with friends and family to enjoy and celebrate such a momentous occasion.

The weekend kicked off for me by attending a ball with some great friends Alex and Michelle also from Stamford Tri Club.

Saturday ended up being a complete rest day for me with Woodhall Spa Sprint Triathlon on the Sunday so I spent much of the day cleaning the house before having dinner at Will's Mum's house.

I had been trawling the weather websites all day looking at the forecast for Sunday which was to be cold, wet, windy and pretty miserable. It would be a Stamford Tri takeover with around 15 or so of us racing in Woodhall Spa. This would be great knowing that there was plenty of familiar faces on race day. After waking up at a lovely sociable hour, I picked up a fellow triathlete from Stamford (Andrea) and drove on up through the awful rain and wind, willing the temperature on my dashboard to rise above 9 degrees with no such luck.

After finally parking the car (on the field past the run course!) we debated about our options before finally taking everything with us from the car due to the 15 minute walk to the main race HQ. We were totally soaked before we arrived at the registration tent and then having registered, it was time for as minimal transition as possible. I decided to leave my shoes off the bike again and cover them over with a towel as well as leave a jacket to wear on the bike.

We then made our way into the pool centre and slowly stripped off our layers to try and acclimatise to the appalling conditions and cold temperatures outside.

those of you that have been following my blog will have seen that I have had a few stomach issues on the run, and having met with Mary on the Saturday morning, i followed her advice of having a pretty big breakfast and then a gel around 20 minutes before the start of the race in order to allow my stomach to be ok for the run. I also was to sip a drink on the bike course. In my haste I had however forgotten my drinks bottle in the car and decided against walking back through the rain to get it, and decided to purchase a sports drink and leave this on my bike. In the end I only took a couple of sips just for good measure whilst on the bike course.

Anyway I didn't get hungry and managed to have my gel whilst waiting around in the changing rooms ready for the start.

It was a pretty miserable start to the race, however there was plenty of support from fellow Stamford Tri Club people which was great to see and hear!

Once called for the swim start into the water we went, and I relaxed at the lovely balmy temperature of the water- thinking to myself that I better enjoy this as the next bit would be mightlilty cold!

I exited the water after 400m (12 laps of a 33m pool) and headed into the mudbath that was transition. Locating my bike, I made a slight error in putting my race belt on upside down and then after finally pulling my my rain jacket, had to negotiate the HUGE muddy puddle that was on the exit of transition.

The bike was the worst part of the race for me. I just couldn't warm up at all! I had no feeling in my fingers or toes and the rain was belting down and the wind was pretty much in my face for most of the first half of the course. I was overtaken by a few people and managed to claw back a couple of places, but all in all it was a pretty dire result coming in at 51:13 for 24km. After my success on the bike in Nantwich I was pretty disappointed when I clocked my time coming back into T2, but there again the conditions were pretty shocking and it was only on the 2nd part of the course that i managed to get moving after the legs had warmed up!

Heading into T2 I felt pretty good, but the legs were moving and after heading out of the run exit (through the horrendous muddy puddle again) I was up on my toes and running strong. I felt pretty good and managed to pass 3 people heading out over the course. At the halfway mark (or so we were informed) I checked that I was on 10:30- and took a second look. I couldn't be running that fast surely?!

Anyway the run was a lovely flat square and therefore I knew where the final part would be and where to put the hammer down.

Coming in for a total time of 1:23:51 wasn't my best effort, but the run split of 22:28 certainly was a PB not only in a race but ever! I was chuffed to bits with that run split and was looking around like a deranged woman at the end to confirm that the run was indeed 5km to confirm my PB.

It was certainly a great event and race, and I must again thank the supporters for coming out on such an awful day to cheer us on in the pouring rain!

I have been having a good block of training recently with my hill rep session each week and increasing reps each time. I really am starting to feel much more confident about Dambuster in 11 days time, which is basically one of my key races of the year.

I am less nervous than I was about the bike, although running along 2 miles of the run route today has filled me with a sense of dread about that!

I am feeling really fit and much better than I ever have in triathlon and feel that I will probably do quite well as long as everything sticks and I don't get any niggles or injuries ahead of race day.

Next on the agenda is a pretty full week of training, with lots of work on the bike ready for next week's taper and journey to Glasgow for a few days with work. I will probably take the old trainers and do a couple of short runs just to to keep things ticking over. My next blog will likely be from after the Dambuster and will be a full run down of how it went.

What a weekend though, it was great to get a race in, some time with good friends and also to attend my first ever street party in Langham. It was really good fun to see everyone out enjoying themselves and celebrating the Queen's reign. I feel immensely proud to be British and part of her empire. Long live the Queen!