First aquathlon of the year
Tonight’s excitement for the Smiths was an aquathlon at Lakeside. We both decided to do the sprint distance (750m swim; 5km run) and managed to get in the water before the start to acclimatise. Lack of time to acclimatise was something that I found difficult last year, but I think it was easier anyway tonight as the lake was quite warm.
In previous years, the swim has been anticlockwise in the lake, but this year it was clockwise, which helped as that’s the usual direction that we swim in.
The start of the swim was quite frantic (TryTri have shared a video) and I got a couple of fairly hard knocks to the head, which isn’t something I’m used to. I don’t think I’d positioned myself well and should probably have started further back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNy8DEtjEOM?rel=0&w=560&h=315
I quickly got into a comfortable rhythm and managed to maintain it for the whole swim.
I had two goals for this race: not to finish last and ideally to beat my time from last year.
During the swim, I could see other people just ahead of me, so I did my best to keep pushing and managed to overtake a couple of people.
Finally, I was in transition. Again, this was an area where I thought I could improve on last year’s time – mainly because I no longer need to put in contact lenses! I’d chosen a spot close to the swim exit, so that my wetsuit wouldn’t have time to drain fully, which seemed to be a successful strategy for me.
I then set off on the run and was surprised that I managed to feel quite good from the start. Overall, the run wasn’t quite 5km (my Garmin had it as 4.85km, which seems about right when comparing it to the measured 5km course that used to be used for parkrun at this location), but I managed a faster pace than I’ve run at any parkrun recently, so think that getting back to Hugh’s running sessions is paying off. I also managed to pass a few people on the run, which is something that I rarely manage.
My best time last year was: 47:52.4, so I was pleased to get a PB tonight: 46:37.8 … and I wasn’t last
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Hello there! Just want to say that, you are inspiring! 🙂
Been running for 2 years now but will have my 1st aquathlon on March 13th. Target time is around 40-45mins. Reading tips from your blog and hopefully will help me reach this goal. Stay inspired!
Thank you – I’ll keep following your blog to see how you get on 🙂