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!