The day had come. All that training, all those hours spent in the pool learning how to swim just that 1 or 2 seconds faster per 100 metres. All those kilometres run around Lowestoft, on the way to Park Run and back, sometimes to work and back. All those bike rides with DAP clubmates, Rock Estate and Beccles Tri guys not to mention the hours of sweaty mess on that damned Wattbike in the gym!
The fact that Suzy was on the same journey & destination as me – Challenge Almere, albeit the Full Distance Race, made our house a little more tolerable in the months leading up to the event! If anyone is reading this from a triathlon background then you’ll know the fatigue, time restraints and general lethargy around the house just before tapering for a big event. Everything runs like clockwork – it has to. If you miss an alarm clock then you miss a session and the rest of the week falls into chaos trying to fit all the key sessions in so we’re up at 5am most mornings. Down to the gym before we’re off to work for 8am. Then back from work around 5:30 to fit in 1,2 or 3 hours of training before having tea at around 9pm – then an hour or so of chilling before hitting the bed before doing it again the next day.
I must admit, sitting here writing this I do feel at an utter loss what to do. The alarm clock is two hours later, I get home at a “normal” time from work and the last two evenings have been filled with absolutely nothing – it’s weird!
We had travelled to Almere, a very modern town just outside Amsterdam on Wednesday/Thursday. The overnight ferry from Harwich to Hoek Van Holland was a refreshing change to our usual foreign air travelling to events. The car was rammed full of kit for both me & Suzy and we wondered how on earth all that fitted in our air bike boxes. After a short(ish) drive to Almere we pulled up in a local car park and walked over to the Transition area which was less than 200 metres from our car park – result!
The hotels we had booked for both me & Suzy, and Danny & Michelle & Cheryl were also within 5 minutes of transition (double result!).
Although the event was 48hrs away there was a lot of hustle & bustle around the event area. With hotel check-in not being until the afternoon we had a few hours to kill so we sat ourselves down for a coffee and hit the expo where all the traders hit you with bargains galore and offer you what you had forgotten to bring at (I’m sure) a slightly elevated price. Fortunately we had a car-load of triathlon garb so didn’t need anything.
You could feel the atmosphere building even though many competitors were yet to even travel to this place.
That evening I ran around the 7km run course in the opposite direction as a steady pace just to see what it was like and I could visualise myself doing quite well on the day as the course, although flat (it is Holland after all!) had a few ups & downs over bridges etc to keep it interesting. My pace, although steady in my mind was fairly swift so I was quite excited that I had relatively fresh legs compared to the last few months where they felt extremely heavy most of the time. I wondered if I actually would have those legs on Saturday morning/afternoon???
In the evening Zone 3 had set up a swim test out in the lake we would be using so we set out to take part in that. Once we donned our wetsuits at the side of the lake we walked in……ever so slightly cold! After a bit of a brain freeze for about a minute, once I was actually moving my arms and swimming a bit harder I got warm and managed to go out to the first turning buoy at 350m and come back – that’s one thing less I have to worry and surprise me – I now knew what the water was going to be like on Saturday morning – fresh!
After some frites & mayonnaise and some beer – standard for my travels to Holland, Belgium or Germany it was time to crash an get ready for the following day.
Due to the overnight travelling on the ship and with me being not the best traveller I was quite tired from the previous night and we didn’t set an alarm. In fact I nearly missed breakfast as I woke just after 10am – the longest I had slept in for several months. Suzy was up early to get in a quick bike ride to loosen the legs, if I recall it was raining lightly and when asked earlier that morning whilst I was still semi-asleep I grunted “I’m not going in that” and rolled over to get another two hours sleep! By the time I had woken Suzy had returned and so had the sunshine and the roads were dry once again.
We walked over to registration and Suzy had her race briefing whilst I registered for my race. Just after her race briefing the whole GB team had their picture taken and it was quite surprising how many GB athletes had come over to take part in the long course event.
A few more coffees and it was time for my race briefing – nothing out of the blue – fairly standard. After that it was dinner time and we met some of the other Lowestoft/Beccles guys who were also at this event doing either the long or middle distances for a spot of lunch at a vegan cafe – perfect excuse to have another frites & mayonnaise (and beer)!
Suzy & I walked back to the hotel as she wanted to prep her bags to leave nothing to chance. I went out on the bike to see some of the course, in fairness I got a bit lost towards the end as I was using the vast network of cycle paths that the Dutch have and somehow found myself half-way round the run course I had used the previous evening and made my way back to the hotel – only 30 minutes more than I had intended.
I quickly sorted my bags out as Suzy had done hers already and was getting restless and wanted to put the bags and bike into transition as soon as possible – one less thing to worry about.
Once we racked our bikes we had dinner and settled down for a good night’s sleep nice & early…..or so we thought….
It turns out our hotel is a nightclub on Friday & Saturday evenings and after tossing & turning for about 3 hours we decided to use our swimming earplugs and we eventually settled at about 2am! Perfect preparation 🙂
Anyway……The Day Had Come…..
An early alarm call, one more time and we were up at 5am sorting our last-minute green bags out and we were ready to race. A short walk and we were at the entrance of transition to meet Danny, Michelle & Cheryl. Danny was doing the Middle Distance with me. Suzy was on the Long Course and Michelle & Cheryl were cheerleaders for the day.
A few last minute checks – pump the tyres up, put the bike computer on the bikes and add a few bits we had forgotten into our bike/run bags and we were good to go.
Suzy had to be in the large changing tent and read for her race start some 30-minutes beforehand so we said our goodbyes and that was that. I now realise that whilst making sure Suzy was ok, it had served as a great distraction for me so I didn’t have to worry about my own race. One she walked off into the changing tent I had nothing else to do but stand there and wait for my race to start – the nerves started kicking in. It doesn’t help when Challenge – the organisers, play dramatic build-up music around the whole transition area for several hours leading to the race start!!!!
I should be used to these now but the final surge of sorting the bike/run bags out and handing in your green “after-race” bag always seems overwhelming for the organisation. After a mass rush 5 minutes before the first swimmers enter the water of literally throwing the green bags at the helpers we were all penned in and ready to enter the water in the rolling start. I saw Suzy start and her long race was a deepwater mass start whereas ours was a rolling start where we arranged our own start times according to our expected swim finish times. I stood in the 35-40min pen as I knew I would be there or thereabouts.
So, with 7 competitors at a time every 10 seconds I was into the water, I wasn’t surprised it was cooler than normal – the Thursday evening test swim helped with that. I set off and kept thinking keep the stroke nice and steady, which I did I think quite well. I caught quite a few swimmers in the water and can only imagine that they had over-estimated their times and they should’ve been in the pen behind me (40-45 minutes). I got bashed a coupe of times but nothing compared to previous events – maybe because I was the one catching instead of being the one being caught???
My sighting was ok, but hindered massively by the bright early morning sunshine into my eyes from 600-1500 metres. Instead I just looked to each side as I breathed to make sure I was still in company of other swimmers and hoped they were sighting better than me and were headed in the right direction!
Out of the water and into the changing tent. I hadn’t had my traditional mid-swim wee so I did it whilst running to my bags in T1 in my wetsuit! lol
In fairness I didn’t look at my swim time, but looking now at the result a 36-minute swim was “ok” for me. I really don’t know how I did a 32-minute swim in Majorca?!?!
Onto the bike, once I got my feet into my shoes which were already fixed on my pedals I proceeded down the bike paths, twisting & turning before we got out onto the sea wall which formed about 40k of our bike route. At 3km I reached into my pocket for an energy gel and I heard a clatter on the ground behind me – this was my asthma inhaler. I just hoped I didn’t need it for the rest of the event – or else I’d be buggered!
Just like Barcelona I was trawling in competitors from the start. There was a slight headwind outbound but this was not stopping me from hitting nearly 25mph average on this exposed part of the course. I passed a few of the Lowestoft/Beccles guys, I didn’t know I had until they voiced their encouragement to me and I looked back and realised it was them. I passed Suzy at about 20km, slowed down to make sure she was alright and didn’t need anything and then carried on in my new tucked-in position to pass just under 700 competitors over the 93km route with no-one overtaking me. Even coming into T2 I was catching people as they were easing off before their run. I thought I had eased off too but clearly not as much as them!
Into T2 where my legs seemed to had disowned me as I ran my bike to my bike rack. I could hear Michelle & Cheryl shouting at me to where I needed to rack my bike but I had remembered the landmarks I had worked out the previous evening when to turn and I found it fairly easily. I ran into the changing tent, needing another wee but this time I used a proper toilet before setting out on the run.
The first kilometre through past the finish line and past the majority of spectators was quite steady – I thought. Until my watch beeped and I had competed it in under 5 minutes. A bit too hard I thought so I stepped back a bit to calm myself. Next one was sub-5 too and I was concerned I was going to blow just like Majorca back in May so I eased off again. This time, even with a quick stop at the first feed station for a water it was 5:16 – it’s like I just didn’t know how to run at a slower pace.
The kilometres just clicked away on that 1st 7k loop quite easily. I saw Danny ahead of me at 7k and encouraged him as I passed him. His aim was to smash the swim & bike and hold on for dear life on the run and to his credit he did exactly that. The next loop saw a few mid-5 minute k’s again with stops and towards the end of that 2nd loop my brain just didn’t want to run, it was like walking seemed a much better option. After a mini-battle in my head I was running again and this argument continued for the next 5k’s where, looking back I lost the time I needed to hit my sub-5 70.3. Once 5k from the finish it was “just a Park Run” and I ran most of the way fitting in a few sub-5 k’s again for good measure.
Just past the finish line and hearing my name being called out it was only at this point did I look down to my overall time – 5:05:40! BLOODY 5 MINUTES!!!!
I’m being utterly honest but that was my first thought – I should’ve gone harder, I should’ve missed out those walks through the feed stations….grrrrrrr!
A few moments later sensibility kicked in and I was elated with the fact I had just sliced 40-minutes off my previous best at this distance and yet again, I had learned a lot about myself during that run. Already I can see where I can improve my performance. I’m confident on a similar day I could slice another 20 minutes off already – but that’s for another time.
Time to collect the medal, the t-shirt, grab my post-race bag, eat some more frites & mayonnaise and cheer on everyone else I know in both events – especially Suzy.
I waited for her eagerly to come out of T2 and cheered her on with immense pride as I saw her bike split was amazing. She had at worst case scenario 7 and half hours to run a marathon to complete the distance AND to beat her PB of 15:20 set at Bolton Ironman in 2017. Each lap she came round she looked calm and collected and looked totally in control of her run plan – run a k then walk for a minute. End of lap 4 was a little different as she was complaining of her thighs starting to lock up. Nonetheless she powered through – god knows how and smashed her PB by 3 hours to now record a 12:19!
As she came down the finishing chute I wanted to be there and share her moment so I jumped the barriers and ran down to the finish with her – super proud.
After walking through the post-race area with her, offering her food, drinks, ANYTHING we finally came out to meet Danny, Michelle & Cheryl to join in on the celebrations of everyone else in the event who were finishing right up until 10pm where the last competitor came in with the whole race cavalcade behind her, fireworks, celebrations and a lot of dancing around – what a finishing experience for that last person – WOW!
So that was that – Almere – completed it mate! lol
Now onto Majorca Long Course Weekend in 6 weeks’ time. This week is mainly nothing until Thursday, then recovery bike rides and some light running before trying & getting back into some regular training by the weekend. Then it’s all about the volume for this event for the next 4 weeks and then taper again. As I say every time – “Why do I enter these bloody things?” but then that feeling when you cross the line with everyone cheering you on it’s one of the only sports where everyone cares and everyone is rooting for you to do your best, whatever ability, whatever age. Love it!