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My London Triathlon Victory!

I am so pleased to report that after 6 months of hard work, I achieved my season goal of winning my age group at the London Triathlon. To say that I am over the moon is a complete understatement! Everything I have done this year has all been in preparation for The London Triathlon and it paid off…big time. I won the 30 – 34 age group with a 6 minute margin, posted a new Olympic distance PB (2:17:15) and a new run PB (37:22). I am still grinning from ear to ear :)

A month ago Paul from Wiggle gave me the shock of my life when he forwarded me an email conversation he had been having with the organisers of the London tri where he had ‘guaranteed me to win’ my age group. I went very pale at that point and my work colleagues had to pick me up off the floor. Training took on a whole new intensity after reading that email. I became so focused on the goal that everything else was put aside until post 3 August. Thankfully I have very patient friends and The Dutchman (my beloved) was behind me 100%.

If you have been reading previous posts you will know how rubbish I am at transition. This year alone I have managed to get stuck in my Aqua Sphere Ironman Icon wetsuit (no bodyglide), couldn’t clip my shoes in (was wearing cleat covers) and just when I thought I was getting a little bit better the best I could do was enter T2 with one cycling shoe still on and the other on the bike. I did however win all of those races despite the problems but I knew I couldn’t take that chance at London.

Transition training took on a life of its own. As I was getting up so early to practise for race day as my race started at 6:30am, and I was tapering I had all this extra time in the mornings before work. I used the time to plan, practise and practise again. I mastered getting my wetsuit off whilst running, I minimalised what I would need in my transition area and I practised putting it all on and off in the correct order. I taught myself after watching some useful YouTube videos how to run with my bike, throw my leg over and get my shoes on my feet on the move. After I had the hang of that, I moved onto dismounting the bike without reducing too much speed and hit the ground running. After almost crashing countless times in Regents Park whilst trying to master these new skills and no doubt providing amusement for the morning joggers, I got better and better.

On race day I was up at 3:45 and I was in serious race mode having spent the Saturday preparing all my gear as well as visualising each aspect of the race. I was feeling relaxed but really up for it. I couldn’t wait to start! If you worked out over the past 6 months the average I train is around 14 hours a week, I had spent 336 hours preparing for a race that I was hoping was going to take me around 2:20 to complete. Driving to the event through Shoreditch was entertaining as people were being turfed out of clubs. I was pretty sure we would be having completely different Sunday’s!

My wave was the first on Sunday morning which was great as that allowed me to see who was ahead of me coming out of the swim when I would start trying to claw my way back to the front. I am never going to be the best swimmer so the plan is always to go out hard, catch a good draft and hang on. I did exactly that and had a good swim without any issues, except for the brownish green sludgy coating on my face when I came out of the water (gross!). I flew into transition and was off running quick as a flash having overtaken at least 10 people in T1 and a few more with my new slick run and jump move to get onto the Focus Izalco Chrono.

I pulled in the girls who were just ahead of me in the swim and was in 10th place at the first turnaround. By the 2nd turnaround I was in 6th and was loving every minute of the race. I have only recently learnt that I can hammer the bike leg and I am still able to run well. A few years of Ironman it was ingrained into me that if it hurt you were going too hard and to slow down immediately. I now trust my legs that I can ride and then run well so I was putting it to the test. The bike course went all the way up to Westminster and it was really cool being on the closed road in such a great part of town. Unfortunately I wasn’t paying too much attention to the scenery! Turning into T2 I had moved into 3rd place and was looking forward to running.

Another speedy transition and I was running hard. I caught the 2nd place girl at the 3km mark and blew past her as she has really slowed down. I timed how far ahead the lead girl was and was very disappointed to learn she had 3 mins on me. By the 2nd loop I had managed to pull her in a meagre 5 seconds after upping my pace! I took a good look at her as we went past each other and she had very youthful looks. I was hoping that meant she was in a younger age group and not just a very lucky 30-something woman with great skin!

I never did manage to catch her and I ran just over 37 minutes trying to pull her in. My previous best on that course (9.4km) was 41 minutes. It certainly showed as I pretty much collapsed over the line and stumbled towards a vacant chair huffing and puffing. A nice lady from St Johns Ambulance were hovering over me thinking there was something seriously wrong with me as I couldn’t even speak to tell her I was OK. There is something very satisfying knowing that you really did give it everything.

Each wave has a mix of age groups so you never know where you are in the rankings until the results are published. I was jumping around my flat Sunday night I was so excited when I opened the results to see my name in that glorious number 1 spot. If that wasn’t great enough, I went into AOL HQ Monday morning to be greeted with a round of applause. My wonderful work mates knew how important this race was to me and had been checking the results. I could definitely get used to the applause greeting every morning ;)

So this week I am taking it easy and having a recovery week. I’m heading out to Nice Friday to catch some rays and do some training in preparation for the upcoming Nottingham Relays. Terry (my coach) also trains another athlete who has done a couple of the same races as me this year and he has always managed to beat me home by anywhere between 1 to 3 minutes. After some very technical calculations we have agreed that he gets a 40 second handicap for the Nottingham Relays. The loser gets to consume many tequila shots. Given I am tipsy after ½ pint these days; it has given me great incentive to kick butt out there!

Happy training!
Cx

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Carolyn Hewett, Team Wiggle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.