Thanks to Simon Sheahan who writes in with a race report on the Joey Hannon Olympic Distance Tri which took place last week. This year saw the race move to the UL complex with the full Olympic Distance on offer for the first time. Read on for full details below.
I travelled down to Limerick on the Saturday afternoon and booked into a B&B that was about 5 min drive to University Limerick. I went down to UL to register and got my goodies bag and race chip. I had a good bowl of pasta that evening and I practiced my routine in my head over and over so I would get it right on the day.
I did not sleep all that well as the B&B was quite noisy during the night! Hopped out of bed about 07.30 and had a bowl of porridge (lucky I brought my own as the B&B only did the Full Irish). Transition opened at 08.00 with the sprint distance starting at 09.30 and the Olympic at 10.30. Went down at 08.30 and most bikes were already in transition. I found a spot and racked my bike.
Transition set up
I locked my cycling shoes in place and tied them off with elastic bands, rolled up my socks and put some talc in them, all my nutrition was on the bike, my runners had the lock laces in, I place my heart rate monitor and my race belt on my bike.
Now my first dilemma starts. I see people in their tri suits heading into the pool and it looks as if they are going to swim in them. This is something new to me and I did not know that it was the done thing. I decide to leave my tri suit in transition (I have never swam in it so I was not confident using it in the pool).
I jump into the lane in the 50m pool (very nice pool and facilities). I am in a lane of 10 and we organise each other in terms of estimated swim times. The gun goes and away we are off. I am 4th in the line and because this is a training exercise for me I decide not to go out too fast or try and kill myself. It is a whole new experience and id much rather a slow comfortable time than falling out of the pool and ruining my cycle.
I am quite surprised at how quick it all goes. I get passed by two and I pass out two athletes. I let my mind drift and before I know it I get the tap on the head for the last 100m. When I jump out of the pool I look around and I can tell that I am definitely in the slower half of the race. 35min to be exact. I didn’t care I was happy!
I run out of the pool and it’s a strange feeling, you know where you should go but you just look at the marshals and where they are waving to and you just follow. Its cold as soon as the outside air hits the skin. Weather conditions are quite bad and a supporter tells me that it is force 5-6 head on going out on the bike but it is on your back on the way home. Its overcast and it looks like rain.
I get into transition and do what every amateur has done (I hope) and run past my bike by about 20m. I back track and grab my helmet and it’s on. I expect the tri suit to go on easy but I am too wet and the damn things gets tangled around my shoulders and my arms are knackered from the swim and it just hurts trying to wrestle with it. I stop, gain some composure and slowly get it on. I lost about 4-7 places due to not having it on for the swim...lesson learned.
I grab the bike and start running out of transition and thanks to my preparation I get off to a flying start. The elastic band trick is great. (Thanks to guy from Piranha who showed us that trick at the beginner tri). I was surprised to see that not many used the elastics.
The bike was harder than expected. Out on the N20 to cork. Roundabouts were marshalled by the Gardai and it kind of made you feel special that they were stopping traffic so you could compete. The head wind restricted me to about 18-22km / hour going out but once you reached the turnaround at 20km the wind was pretty much on your back allowing me to get up to about 36-42 km / hour I hit 50km at one stage. The last Km took me into the UL ground and into one final head wind. This was really tough. I just wanted off the bike at this stage. In total I was passed by about 5 others and I passed about 7. Not a huge improvement in terms of places.
Back into transition and I racked the bike. The runners went on easy and I am running immediately. Great transition 50 seconds. (one of the best!).
The run terrain was not great with a 1km path over a building site. Not ideal by any means. The run is my stronger discipline but I decide to keep to training pace. I am in pretty good shape at this stage and I am confident thinking about the Ironman 70.3. I get around the run in 45 min and I finish with a good step in my stride and with plenty to spare in the tank.
There was great atmosphere around the race finish. The winner was Mark Dempsey who broke the 2 hour barrier with 1:59:38
My own times were a little more modest finishing in 111 Place
Swim T1 Cycle T2 Run Total
35:01 03:12 1:21:14 0:00:58 0:45:32 2:45:57
A great experience overall. The event was well organised and many thanks to all those volunteers. Next is Fingal then Athy and then the big one-Ironman 70.3 in Wimbleball. Bring it on!!
PiranhaTri
http://www.piranhatri.com/article.php/20070513164635926