Harrogate Sprint Triathlon - 8th May 2022 - My First Triathlon

Triathlon? Completed it mate.

First one down, and hopefully many more to come. My Main aim was to finish and feel like I put in a good effort, and I think I did that.

So this triathlon is hosted by the Harrogate Triathlon Club (more info here). I was quite a late booking onto this as I felt my training had been going really well, and I wanted an event to do before another sprint triathlon I had on a little closer to home later in the month.

I stayed over the night before, I’m not a great morning person at the minute, and notorious for being last minute, so thought that would help me. Managed to get a recce of the bike course done on the Saturday, which I think helped me a lot. Not only did I find out there were 2 long slow climbs, but I also found out I am not able to drink whilst riding, as I fell into the ditch on the side of the road whilst going up the incline . At least it was on the recce.

Got registered, listened to the brief, and still had a couple of hours to kill, so watched a few others come in and out of transition, which helped calm my nerves somewhat, and then just chilled out with the other half for a bit, and actually did some warming up exercises.

Set my bike up in transition the closest to the exit. I figured it would allow me time to get my breath after the swim, and start the process of bringing my run legs back after the bike.

Swim

I didn’t feel like the swim went too well. My time was decent (around 2:01/100m), but never really felt like I got into a rhythm. The 30m pool confused me more than I thought it would, I found myself reaching for the end every now and then and realising I was still a stroke away. The 5 seconds between swimmers felt quite quick and annoyingly, the guy behind me was tapping my ankle on the first lap. I know I should have stopped, but I never for another couple of lengths as I managed to gain on him. Once he passed, the girl behind me tried to overtake me, and to avoid a head on collision with the guy coming back towards us, decided it would be best to just swim on top of me for a little bit.

Composed myself, and found myself on her ankles for the rest of the swim, so I tried to relax and get a draft off her for a little bit, rather than start ankle tapping. The other one behind me started tapping my ankles, and then tried to overtake both of us, crashing with the guy coming back the other way. All in all, it was a bit of a mess, but I got through it.

Bike

Got to my bike, socks on, shoes on, and off, nice and easy. Smashed a gel in, not very useful on this distance, but helped psychologically I think. I knew what the bike course had in store, so I just got on with it. I roughly knew where I needed to let rip, to make the most of the flats and descents. One thing I noticed on the bike throughout was I was flying past people on the flat and the descents, and then the same people were passing me with ease on the climbs. Not sure if this is the low gear ranges on my bike, or my fitness, but either way I’m looking at new bikes .

2 laps of the course was rough, especially finishing on an incline, I found myself going into transition feeling knackered.

Run

Bike racked, swapped shoes, and out. Nice and simple. Run was flat and downhill on the first ¾, the last ¼ was the same incline you finish up on the back. 2 laps of that. On the second lap, I thought I would really try and up my pace on the descent, started feeling a bit of cramp trying to creep in on my hamstring, so eased off a little. I crossed a junction coming up to the last corner onto the ascent to the finish, and had an incident with a van, which resulted in me smacking my arm off the back of it due to them slamming their brakes on. A few choice words thrown their way, and onto the final climb. The woman almost sent me for another lap until I eagerly showed her my wrist band. Over the line and done. Just like that, a triathlete was born .

The event itself was very well organised, the route was well signed, and I will definitely be signing up for it in 2023. Really looking forward to the Cleveland Tri later this month.

Thanks to everyone from my triathlon club who has given advice, pushed me during training, and given me the confidence to do it .