Vitruvian Triathlon – Sat 6th Sept Rutland Water.

1900m Swim – 85k Bike – 21k Run.

Once again I stood at the side of a lake at 6:30am in a wet suit and questioned my sanity. I questioned it again a quarter of the way into the swim when my goggles got knocked off, even more so with a quarter of the swim to go they leaked to the extent that I swam the remainder with my eyes closed, this might explain why the swim took me 4-5 mins longer than I hoped for. 1900m swim done in 42 mins – 526th out of about 750 starters not a great start.
Out onto the bike for two loops of a hilly course, over a 1000m of climbing and windy to boot. Thankfully the rain stayed away. Quite pleased with the bike, about 20mph average 190th ranking for that aspect. Things were getting better.
Finally the run course, cramp and sore calf’s from the off, first mile in sub 7 mins probably didn’t help but I wanted to get it out of the way. Cramp in right leg eased up, as did the left, but for some reason I lost all feeling in my left foot. I worried about this for a while but then realised I probably wasn’t aware of how sore it was and it was a good thing – a predominantly flat run course but affected quite a lot by the wind. I’d fancied the idea of sub 5 hours and had to push for most of the run to achieve it, my usual tactic of walking through the aid stations to get a full drink of water in, was replaced with running thru and spilling most of it on my face and down my front!
However mission accomplished. 4:58.34 which I was very pleased with. 1/2 mara in 1:38 including transition. 108th rank on the run 169th position overall. Very pleased as it was the British National long course champs so many very serious athletes there.

Richard Baker.

Results at: http://www.pacesetterevents.com/results/2008/vitruvian08results.pdf