If you've never seen or competed in the Club Relays at Holme Pierrepont, Nottingham then you don't know what your missing.
The organisers One Step Beyond Promotions tag the weekend as "Organised Chaos" which describes the whole weekend of racing to a tee !
I have raced in the Club Relays for the last 4 or 5 years but it's only in the last 2 years that our club has really taken this weekend to heart, last year we took an incredible 10 teams, this year we took 13 teams to race over the 2 days with over 500 other teams. The beauty of this event is that it welcomes all abilities, from top class triathletes, to age groupers, to club triathletes to newbies, everyone races together and gives it their all, fantastic.
Each team consists of 4 triathletes who take it in turn to complete a 500m lake swim (x4) then onto a 15km (x4) closed loop bike circuit then finally a 5km (x4) run, the baton hand overs are just a crazy mass of triathletes trying to find their tag, great fun.
Some friendly club rivalry between teams as always but the team I captained had another goal, all of us over 40, so a podium position in the over 40 Championship was our goal.
In the past we have finished around 35th overall but 5th place & 7th place in the Over 40 Championship, this was the fastest Over 40 team we had ever entered so surely this year was our year.
On the Saturday the open category, mixed & ladies teams raced around the rowing lake at Holme Pierrepont, it was great to cheer club mates on during the day, knowing that tomorrow we would be competing ourselves.
As I'd mentioned in my last post, I've tried to think less about technique during the swim and just go for it, was happy with my time for 500m at 7:30 especially as I put myself first in the relay legs so had some fun in the "washing machine" start, it was a pretty frantic battle to the first and even 2nd turn buoy, elbows and hands flying every where, gave as good as I got, I loved it although I can understand why many avoid it.
Anyway the swim tags continued & I eagerly awaited our 4th swimmer to return and tag for me to go out on the bike, The fastest teams were already out on the 1st lap of the bike (3 laps) and two of our other younger teams (with some very talented swimmers) already had a 5 minute lead as I ran out of transition with my bike,
The bike exit was narrow and with two triathletes mounting there bike in front of me on the mount line I made the decision to run through them and past the mount line before jumping on to the bike at speed, it worked perfectly, and I sped away, I think it was a good half mile before I even started fastening my shoes (I always have my bike shoes clipped in on a triathlon, and ride a little way with feet on top of shoes to get up to speed before fastening them).
3 lung bursting laps later and into a flying bike dismount., speeding in balancing on one pedal, just as I was about to jump off & run, the triathletes in front of me dismounting just stopped, the only thing I could do was serve right as I dismounted, unfortunately my bike flicked up and ended up flying like a kite behind me as I ran to the racking, tagged my team mate and was then approached by the Race Referee "for a chat" as my bike had hit the dismount marshall .... whoops! No harm done though, all my fault, I should have anticipated more, apologised to the referee and all was well. (I did go and find the marshall later and apologise also, he was fine, I knew him and had been marshalling with him the day before so all was good.)
All our time had had a good bike leg, my time was a little slower than I would have liked but I certainly made up for it on the run, felt good all the way, and finished with a 18:22 (although the 1st leg run is just a fraction short of 5k) still very happy with that.
We had no idea where we were overall or in the Over 40 Championships but we had gained time on one of our club teams that beat us out of the water and we were now only 2 minutes behind (we had also heard that they had received a 2 minute penalty for not racking a bike correctly) so it was all to play for, with the 2 fastest runners going head to head, albeit 2 minutes apart. It was quite exciting.
Our runner gave it everything and smashed the run but their runner was just on another level and had a great run, we finished just 1:15 behind our younger rivals, to bring the battle over the last 2 years to a draw (we finished just 13 seconds ahead last year).
A quick visit to timing showed that we had finished 37th overall and 6th in the Over 40 Champs, maybe next year!
Well maybe not for me, I'm hanging up my Club Relay Captain armband for now and as I mentioned in the last post, I'm going to concentrate this tired old body on just endurance racing next year, so its unlikely I will be racing at the relays, but I will certainly be back one day.
A great weekend of racing with friends, great camping and & great company.
So I'm going to chill for a few weeks now, still going to get some biking & running in to keep ticking over, I've got my eyes on a 6 hour run race over the Humber Bridge called "Hell on the Humber - reloaded" might have a go at that, then its into winter training, need a very good base this winter, it could see the return of a variation of #RunTheMonth from last October!
Back soon.
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