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I did the Cotswold tri at the weekend, however, only just got around to writing a report about the event, mainly because I felt fairly disappointed in the position I finished.
It was a well organised race with a big field, 400 entries I believe. There was no repeat of last year's fog, you may remember the swim was cut short last year due to practically zero visibility, this year we had beautiful weather with no wind, couldn't have asked for better conditions.
Swim was organised in age group waves, women and elites first, then 45 + men and I started in the next wave 40 - 45.
Amazing to see some people actually breast stroked the 750m swim, that's got to be hard work in a wetsuit!
Fairly happy with my swim, I started on the inside line, but it was a good 250m to the first turn so the field had thinned out by the time we reached the first turn.
The turning points were boats with their mast up so really easy to sight.
100m run from the lake to T1 so no problem stripping wetsuit off to waist by the time I reached my bike.
Bike went really well, just got my head down and worked really hard, the last couple of miles were really close racing with my mate Dave Moxham from Corsham Running Club and a group of guys he was racing against.
Really please with bike split at an average speed of 24.5 mph.
T2 went well, very quick, but still beaten out onto the run by Dave. I chased Dave down and really dug in thinking that he was just behind me all the way around, as it was nobody passed me and I finished the 5k in 17 mins, not bad although I did do 16 mins last year, however, I've not done any speed work this year.
So finish time was 1:04 Hrs, it felt like I had raced really hard and it felt very quick. However, the reason I felt so dejected was that despite all this, I finished 10th Vet and 37th overall - I know it was a high class field, but I would have liked a better finish position for what felt like my best performance at a Sprint race so far - maybe I need to concentrate on the longer events.
Jon G