National Club Relays

Back in 2010 I raced with an all girls Rugby Tri Team and we finished an excellent 10th overall, last year I raced for my sponsored Linebreak mixed Team and we also finished an excellent 10th overall......but this was my first year in a mixed Rugby Tri Team 'Goodwin's Glory Hunters' along with Josie, Tom and Adam and it was brilliant! The club put out an impressive 14 teams (participation at it's best!!!) and the inter-club banter was fantastic!  I think we finished 3rd or 4th Rugby Tri Team which was excellent and it was an honour to race with the ever so laid back Tom, the always smiling Josie and the soldiering on Adam who had a sore calf.

James & Neil sneaking a cheeky run in

It was also so nice to see lovely supporters and old friends: Christa and Anne Marie and their respective other halves who must have been bitten by the sporting bug as I caught them out running before the races started!  My new buddies from Triks were also there with a spring in their step as usual and provided much support, love and banter!!  It's always nice to see my GB Age Group athlete girls from around the circuit too (sorry I didn't find you Helen for that toasted marshmellow!) and I must say a huge well done to the Absolute Tri Girls who finished 2nd overall, Jenny Latham for finishing 2nd overall in the mixed category and Danielle Stewart for finishing 3rd overall in the mixed category.  The talent of athletes was phenomenal.

Chris and I

I didn't race too hard at the relays as it was more of a good training tempo day out in the middle of a hard block of training for me and with the weather being so horrific at times the bike was a case of better to be safe than sorry so that proved to be more of a nice tootle than a hardcore effort (I felt so bad for Adam who was out on the bike when the heavens opened!).  Nevertheless it's always interesting to look at times to see if I'm heading in the right direction, and with a good run (finally!!) I can safely say that I am:

	Swim 500m	Bike 9ish miles	Run 5k	Total
2010	8:17 (old course)	25:13	21:41	55:10
2011	9:26	23:38	21:12	54:16
2012	8:34	23:40	19:28	51:52

I hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as me :-)

Midland Time Trial Series

Good news! The results have been confirmed for the Women's Midland Time Trial Series and with a first, a second, a third (and a course record!) I managed to finish 3rd overall! This has been a great series to be a part of and it's been a nice feeling to know I can give the cyclists a run for their money.  I also finished 2nd in the improvements table and many people have commented on how much I've improved this season......I just hope it continues!



This pic was taken at Mums back in Feb to help get a good TT position, all the hours on the turbo paid off (not sure about the socks though!)


In the Midland Sporting Courses Series, depsite being unbeaten, I am likely to finish 2nd overall as I can't fit anymore races into the season! With 7 events to score, it was always going to be tough to squeeze enough races in but again, I've loved being a part of the series and raced well over the 5 races that I've completed.

Time Trialling back in March

One thing I have definitely learnt about time trialling is that my preparation to detail is uselss! For example, the last race of the series I drove into Birmingham City Centre before realising I was definitely not in the right place for a time trial! A mad panic and a crazy rush to the correct location meant no warm up, feeling slightly frazzled, all my drink had gone in the way-too-long car journey and to top it all off, no skinsuit! I'd like to say this was the only race that this has happened, but this sort of preparation seemed to be a regular feature for my TTs! In this race, where I placed third, I was 5 seconds off 2nd.....something that's definitely achievable with better preparation!  If I do the series again next year, I hope to be much smarter in my approach.  Oh and my efforts got a little newspaper mention (despite the heading being about Bedford where I actually didn't race very well at all!). Now.....time to work on my running!

Anglian Water Tri

Anglian Water Tri
12th August 2012

I have no idea why I entered this race, in fact I didn't even realised I had entered this race (I thought I had entered Cambridge Triathlon) but luckily this race was just 20 mins outside cambridge so the B &B I booked didn't go to waste! Mum and I went over on the Saturday morning to have a lovely girly day together in the sun.  Over lunch we read the race information, how I missed the message before hand I don't know but apparently the lake was infested with killer shrimps and before we could leave transition our wetsuits would have to go in a special solution:

Killer shrimp infestation

This race was without a doubt the FRIENDLIEST race I have ever been to.  People wore sandwich boards saying "how can I help?".  The marshals and volunteers cheered so enthusiastically that I actually thought they were my best buddies! The whole atmosphere of the other competitiors was just lovely too, in fact it turns out I'd already met the race organiser on the GB scene, I saw an old friend from uni, met Barry who I'd raced at Bala, Will who I recognised from Budapest and made a new friend in the form of Sander who jumped out of his Eurocar van beating his chest and singing "It's a glorious day!" What a bunch!

Enjoying the glorious day!

We all started out  of the water for the swim and had a little run and dive in....how exciting! It reminded me of Israel (although I wasn't quite as nervous haha!).  I got clear water straight away and felt like I had a great swim, I felt strong and relaxed and had good form.  Needless to say with a time of 28 minutes I am CONVINCED it was long, especially as I was out the water first female and in the top 10 overall. It was definitely a stronger swim than Northampton and I did that in 24 mins.

I'm on the left of the buoy, just gettin dropped from the leaders but a good gap on pack 2

Anyway I took my time in transition and put socks on to protect my not-quite-yet-healed blisters from Bedford.  Off on the bike and it looked like a really fast course BUT I just couldn't get going.  I definitely still had Thursday's uplanned TT in my legs. I think a bit of complacency creeped in and I never quite got 'on it' but I still returned into T2 in the lead. I got an absolutely massive cheer from the crowd for being 1st lady, it was so overwhelming, I couldn't believe it.



Returning to T2 with quite a big lead

Having lost so much run form this year the one aim of this part of the race was to stay relaxed! However the heat, the terrain and the deceptively hard hills didn't make that easy! I ran the first 2 miles in around 7:15 pace before starting to dramatically deteroriate.  I knew I had a massive lead on 2nd place and found it hard to push on knowing this.  The run was more like 11k than 10k, and a hard 11k at that. Quite a lot of guys went past me but I tried to just enjoy the run and held on to be the first girl across the line!  What a great feeling! This is my second overall olympic distance victory this year.  I am lucky that I'm beginning to master the swim and bike as my run left a lot to be desired! The second placed female athlete, a fellow GB triathlete in my age group, finished just over a minute behind, I'm glad it didn't come down to a sprint finish as my running legs didn't feel like joining me!

Fading on the run

Positives of the race = I really enjoyed it!!!! And that's what it's all about!

Negatives of the race = my running form has completely deserted me.  However, I saw a quote on Twitter last week though, someone wrote "Lucy Hall can't run yet, but watch out when she can!!" I'm not quite (!!!) Lucy Hall, but if I can keep confident about my running, one day it'll come back to me :-)

A lovely prize for my efforts!