Loch Lomond Triathlon
Jul.17, 2007, filed under Miscellany
Just a brief report for the Loch Lomond Triathlon — it was a short race and I have no photos. Frood was manning the digicam, so I’ve pulled a few stills off that. They’re not very good quality, though I’ve stuck a few below for the sake of completion.
We had intended to camp on the Friday night but Munky Am An Rane God and it bloody tipped it down. So we drove over on the Saturday morning, by which time my Mum’s counter-magic had beaten that of the Munky and the sun had come out.
It was a very small field — all of 30 — which was nice. The Loch Lomond Tri is one of the few events left that’s done purely for fun and it shows. Long may it stay that way. It was my first open water race and only my second ever open water swim (I’ve been snorkelling and swimming in the sea since I was about 4, but that doesn’t count cos it wasn’t serious swimming), so I was a bit nervous. My suit still felt rather tight as well.
The swim was bloody hard. The loch was broken by chaotic chop, and it was very shallow. There were moments where I was touching the bed while stroking. I found myself getting tired, which felt like the suit being too tight across the shoulders and making me have to work on the recovery stroke. Mentally there’s a huge difference between having to do another 25m x n as opposed to having to swim all the way to that big buoy over there and back again. Seeing the distance laid out like that makes it seem a very long way. The swim was only 300m there and 300m back, and I regularly do 1500 – 2000m in training (750m in racing), but that felt like the longest swim of my life.
It was slow, too. In my last training session before the race I did 600m in 13 minutes. This swim took me 16.
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Then it was onto the bike. There was the usual fumbling of fingers trying to get my gloves on. I seriously was not leaving them behind knowing it was an off-road course. T1 headed into a grass section then onto the park roads, almost immediately into a WALL OF DOOM. I managed to get up it on the bike, unlike the girlie ahead of me who was walking, despite having completed the Etape 2 weeks previously.
I lost it on the steep offroad descents. I’ve yet to discover whether I simply lack offroad skills, or whether offroad will turn out to be another thing to add to the short list of things I can’t do because I have no 3D vision. I just couldn’t identify the hazards in time. Every time I tried to let loose the bike skittered dangerously out of control and with Aberfeldy coming up in a couple of weeks I couldn’t afford to take the risk of an injury. Munky came skooshing past me at a rate of knots on this section, although I didn’t recognise him at the time.
The run was two laps of a steep, grassy loop with the last lap feeding into a lap of the main arena. I didn’t start to feel good until the last kilometre, having spent the whole of the race until that point feeling sick and with bad stomach cramps. It would seem that the Taut energy drink I had been using, despite being clean and fine when not racing, just isn’t suitable for my digestive system while working hard. The finish was solid and I crossed the line feeling fit and like I could do the whole thing again. This probably means I didn’t push as hard as I should have done. I didn’t make up any of the time Munky gained on me in the bike leg: that’s grudge match territory, that is.
Not happy with my performance in this race. Fourth from last, with some pretty shoddy times to show for it. I was grumpy about it for the next two days. Not only that but we discovered my wetsuit has split along the seam, which means a warranty replacement and I can’t get to the shop until Saturday. I want to enter the Portobello OW sprint, but I’m not sure I can until I know I’ll get my suit sorted before then. That’s annoying, because it’s in only 3 weeks and I have to get my entry in pretty soon or it’ll fill up. I’m also not sure whether the Orca is too tight and I should try a different model; or if it’s just a matter of not being used to swimming in neoprene.
Still. Aberfeldy in two weeks. We’ll see how that goes.
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Singularity
~something that is singular as (a) a separate unit, or (b) unusual or distinctive manner or behavior; PECULIARITY;
~the quality or state of being singular;
~a point at which the derivative of a given function of a complex variable does not exist but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists;
~a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole. Sight
