Skipton Triathlon

Trying to stay relaxed on the run at Skipton Triathlon

My first triathlon of 2014 and my first triathlon since the start of June last year.

This was the second time I've competed at Skipton Triathlon. The first was in 2012 when I came 4th woman in a time of 1.10.01 so I was pleased to better that this year finishing 1st woman in a time of 1.08.19. Skipton is a sprint distance triathlon with a 400m pool swim, 20km hilly bike on open roads and 5km run on tarmac paths through a park. This year, following some wet weather the transition area resembled a cross country running event and I left looking like I'd been mountain biking! But all the mud didn't seem to bother triathletes or spectators and there was a good atmosphere with plenty of support on the run course.

I didn't have a great swim but this was because due to some poor planning on my part and a GPS failure on my phone's part I arrived just in time to set up in transition but without enough time to do any kind of warm up. My swim then served as a warm up for the bike.

At the start of the bike, triathletes were flying past me and disappearing into the distance which was a bit disconcerting, but once we hit the hills I started passing people and worked really hard through this middle hilly section. With 10km still to go I started to think that maybe I'd worked a bit too hard, but a downhill section gave me a bit of a rest and I managed to hold it together to the end.

On the run my plan was to set off steady and build through the second lap if I felt good. As it was, I was pleasantly surprised with how my legs felt after a hard bike so I set off faster than I had intended to and then just tried to stay relaxed throughout.

My transitions were fine too, although I was quite a bit slower than the last time I competed at Skipton because I stopped to put my waterproof jacket on in T1 and take it off again in T2! I wasn't about to go from wearing long sleeves and tights, 3 layers on top plus gloves and overshoes for cycling to just a wet tri-suit, even if it would have saved me 51 seconds in transition time.

So all in all it was a good day out for me. Next up I'm off to Portugal to compete in an ETU European Cup race, it's a standard distance triathlon and will be quite a different challenge but one I'm really looking forward to now.