Roe Valley Race Report

Tuesday, May 23 2006 @ 10:35 PM IST

I've decided to get my turn at doing the race report done early this year. Triangle Triathlon Club put on a well organised race at the weekend. Four Piranhas made the long drive from Dublin to Limavady for the Ulster Sprint Distance Championships. The race was based out of Roe Valley Leisure Centre, with 6 well spaced out waves of roughly 25 competitors.

The swim took place in a five lane pool, with the transition area in the car park outside the leisure centre. It was my first race of the season and I started in the last wave. I was leading out my lane, so didn't get to do any drafting. In a pool swim overtaking can be tricky and there was the usual jostling for position with a few dodgy overtaking manoeuvres (sorry guys!). Was first out of my lane and proceeded to an extremely slow transition where I got my top wrapped up under my arms.

On the outward leg of the bike course we had a strong tailwind behind us, so I hammered off trying to catch all the people who had passed me in transition. There were plenty of nice ups and downs and my speedo clocked 63kph on the last big downhill, which put me in a great mood...

Unfortunately, that nice tailwind wasn't as much fun when we had to turn around and cycle against it back to Limavady. The hills were hard work and I ground through the gears trying to catch a few more people on the bike. Before long we were back into the Leisure Centre courtesy of some very cyclist friendly marshalling by the PSNI.

Transition two went smoothly, but I was feeling the efforts on the bike and my calves were very tight. It was a few hundred metres into the run before they loosened out. Unfortunately, I didn't up the tempo afterwards and lost four or five places before I finally picked it up again shortly after the turnaround and held my position to finish in 10th place.

In line with my squad training plan, the race was a "training" race for me with no tapering beforehand. That meant I was fairly pleased with the result - although my run and transitions need work! I managed to come first in my age group and got a very welcome cheque and medal, but that did mean standing on a stage in front of everyone for ages. As Peter Savage said, anything for an envelope!

Congratulations to the organisers for a smoothly run event and well done to my Piranha team mates. I'd certainly recommend this race to anyone looking for an early season race next year. Next up for me is the Fingal Sprint Triathlon...

Members Results

Pos	Name	Cat	Swim	Rank	Trans1	Cycle	Rank	Trans2	Run	Rank	Overall
10	Eimhin McManus	30-34	00:11:23	(015)	00:00:52	00:33:06	(007)	00:00:25	00:19:46	(020)	01:05:30
32	Niall Smart	25-29	00:13:29	(067)	00:00:57	00:35:59	(030)	00:00:40	00:20:05	(024)	01:11:08
81	Michael Grimes	35-39	00:14:58	(101)	00:00:44	00:38:36	(059)	00:00:46	00:25:27	(114)	01:20:29
103	Emily Ennis	25-29	00:12:59	(046)	00:00:55	00:44:20	(121)	00:00:36	00:24:14	(094)	01:23:02

Related Links
Photo Gallery on Piranha Website
Triathlon Ireland Race Report
Triathlon Ireland Photos
Full Results on Triathlon Ireland Website

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