Event 1 - Southwater Relay Sunday 2nd Sept 2018

 Event 1 of 40 - Well the day finally arrived for my first event of this challenge, after all the hard work of planning, organising, preparing, exercising and worry the fun bit was about to happen – yay! Southwater Relay is a slightly bonkers and fun and relatively short distance team triathlon set in the stunning backdrop of Southwater Country Park. Each team consists of three people or legs and each person completes the whole course and then tags the next person who then completes the course again and so on. I was the middle leg, leg number 2. The course is a 400m lake swim, an 18km bike around the roads nearby to the park and a 3.8km run.

My team was chosen by Britri which is the triathlon club that my family belong to (mainly for my son as he competes in kids tris) but they have been fantastic supporting me and giving me advice. There were 30 of us from Britri so 10 teams and I’d never met my team mates before the day! A race report from Owen (leg 1) the previous week informed me he had just completed an ironman (wowzers!) and messages leading up to the race from Tony (leg 3) which were rather hilarious meant I knew I was in good hands. All I could think was “poor them having me in their team!”

The competitors car park was a short distance from the park and I met up with Julia who has been filming me for her documentary “Sharing Hope” at the ungodly hour of 6am and we made the short walk through Southwater Country Park which was so beautiful, mist over the lake and everything lol.

There was a lively buzz once we got to registration, there was bike mending, massages, bike racking, teas/coffees – it was all going on and everyone was in great spirits.

I was so excited and yet terrified at the same time which is quite a nice feeling to be honest, I liked the anticipation..….right up until I saw the first leg of the triathlon set off and then the terrified part of me won and I started to feel sick! Can you believe I ended up desperate to get out on the course to deal with the adrenaline which was making me feel sick?!

Owen did such a great job on the first leg that he came in from the bike much earlier than I had expected so I quickly grabbed my hat and goggles (wet suit was already on by this stage, hauled into it very efficiently by a fellow lady at britri) and I jumped into the lake to acclimatise. It was lovely and cool, what wasn’t lovely was the squidgy mud between my toes getting in and out of the water – yuk!

I was luckily one of the first to leave the pen for the second leg so an almost clear lake before me, I jumped in and was off. I decided on a breathing rhythm on every stroke as I knew I’d set off too quickly with all the excitement going on and I didn’t want to end up in the middle of the lake out of breath. I normally swim train bi-laterally (thats breathing on both sides), I always have done but every stroke worked really well for me this time. I found getting into a rhythm quite hard as I kept checking I was going in the right direction - definitely didn’t want to swim all wonky and add 100m to the distance I needed to cover! This is something I will need to work on, checking where I’m going and getting into a swim rhythm. I did have a cheeky 20m of breaststroke at the turn to have a look around and see what was going on and then set off on the journey back to land and the return seemed a lot quicker and faster.

Once out of the water, I couldn’t undo my flippin wetsuit – this has been my biggest fear all the way through training, not being able to get my wetsuit off. But after a few failed tries whilst running to transition I stood still and got the damn thing undone and then raced to my bike. 

Westsuit came off quite easily in the end, I sat down (as I always tell my son to do in transition) to get my shoes and race belt on. It always makes me laugh watching triathletes hoping around on one leg trying to get shoes on in transition. By sitting down not only do you get a little rest haha! The shoes go on quicker!

Onto the bike and out on the road….and relax, or so I thought. Riding a bike is easy, racing a bike….slightly harder. I was out near the front of the race (due to Owen’s super performance and my swim) so a few competitors passed me which I was expecting – there were some serious pros out there on the day. Once about 10 had passed me I started to get a wriggle on. I had no idea about the course, no idea how long each leg would take, completely in the dark. My only goal had been to complete the course but now it was going rather well I didn’t like being overtaken! So after another 10 competitors passed me I thought I must be cycling really slow so I pushed harder, I didn’t want a single other person to overtake me but alas my mind was thinking one thing and my cycling speed was quite another. Trying to keep up with any of the athletes was apparently impossible for me!

I have to say the cycling part of the tri felt like it went on for AGES! According to the results, I was out there for nearly 43 minutes which is way longer than I expected as I really had no idea going in to this race how long any of this was supposed to take. At one point I couldn’t see any other competitors, race officials or race signs/directions and I thought I’d actually gone off course, panic! But thankfully I was on track and I made it back to transition and this one was a pretty quick turnaround.

The run started well considering I’d pushed my legs hard on the bike, right up until I hit the start of the first circuit of the park and it was a hill that went on for ages. I’ll let you into a little secret – I don’t run up hills! So I walked the hilly bits and ran like octopus, arms flapping around all over the place on the down bits. Kept a steady pace on the flat bits. The worst part of the race by far was the start of the second circuit knowing I had to do the hill again but the thought of my team mate Tony waiting there for me and the 40+ cyclists that passed me on the cycle spurred me on, I didn’t want to let my team mates down…..j_u_s_t k_e_e_p g_o_i_n_g…….

I have to say I felt elated when my leg of the race was over, I’d done it, first ever triathlon and I loved it (blisters and all!). A hiccup on the timings means that I don’t know exactly what my swim time was. The 1^st leg run and the 2^nd leg swim time combined in error so I’m taking a guess that Owen took about 16 mins on the run which means my swim time was approximately 10 mins 51 seconds, bike was 42:52 and my walk/run was 22:11 Happy Days. My next event is the Sebamed Brighton and Hove Triathlon on Sunday 16^th September 750m sea swim, 20km bike, 5km run. Longer distances but no hills, oh yes…wish me luck x