Aberfeldy

So Aberfeldy middle distance has now been and gone, and I've returned from my brief countryside sojourn to return to reality and the city a little more relaxed and happy that I've made progress.

After getting the team to the caravan on Friday, we headed off to meet many other GTCers for a cheeky ruby murry before heading to possibly the dullest race briefing in the history of race briefings. A cheeky wee nightcap followed in the pub then it was back to the van to crash out.

Seeing how as I was doing the run leg of a relay team, getting up at the back of 6 in the morning to begin race prep was a little odd, and did skew my sense of how to prep properly quite a bit, so I just tried to stick to as normal a routine as possible; some oats for breakfast, make up an energy drink for sipping at later on and slowly wake up. Unfortunately as I couldn't find my running shorts before I left the flat on Wednesday, and as I seemed to have mislaid my tri shorts, I was left with my leggings for the race, though at that time of the morning I wasn't complaining with the extra layer.

We packed ourselves into a couple of cars and headed round to Kenmore for the swim start & T1, taking time to chat with the GTCers around & get a few foolish snaps, particularly as we'd been given 666 as a race number.

As the racers piled in, I couldn't help but feel a little relieved that I wasn't one of them getting into that "13"degC water, and once they were off and into the second lap, the wind was picking up, making me happier still to be out of the choppy Loch Tay. We watched a number of cold looking bodies pile out of the water, cheering on all and sundry, then Andy handed over to Christine and she was off on the bike. Once the last swimmer was out of the water, we headed back to the car and then to Aberfeldy to wait in the rec centre until it was the turn of the runners.

This was the weird bit, as I was now waiting around to do a run without a start time only a vague band when I expected Christine to finish her leg, so it was a case of chatting with everyone and keeping the fuel topped up. As the first cyclists neared T2, the holding pen was set up for the relay runners - only the sheepdog was missing to keep us all in check. Paul then Mike beasted into T2 to unleash GP and Tom onto the run course leaving me standing in the sun that had finally appeared which, thanks to my handy leggings, was starting to roast me. The relay pen emptied down to 3 of us, which had us all feeling a bit lonely, until there was another influx of runners who had sensibly stayed outside to chat to friends till much closer to their start time.

Once Christine arrived in transition, I was raring to go. Quickly swapping over the timing chip I shot off out of transition at a fair old pace, shooting up the hill way faster than I had intended. Finishing the first km in just over 4 minutes, I sensibly decided that this was an unsustainable pace for me so pulled it back to 5 to 5:30 min km pace and settled into a speed that I could keep. I quickly started taking plenty of runners doing the full event, but pleasingly I was picking off several relay runners too.

At about 3km out I passed GP on the return leg about half a km behind 3rd place in the relay, but unfortunately a few problems prevented him from catching up. Another km or so along was Tom pounding out a similar pace to GP. My tempo seemed all right at this point so I pushed along as hard as I could without pushing the heart rate up too high, but I was regretting being stuck with my leggings as I was starting to well heat up now. At the feed stations it was just about getting some water to drink & plenty to pour over myself to try and take some of that heat out.

At about 5km in I could feel a blister forming on the arch of my right foot. Now, this was utterly my fault. For a couple of months I've been telling myself I should get new trainers, but not getting round to it. As the kms continued, it just got worse, and I truly expected it to be burst and bleeding so I just did my best to put it from my mind and keep on truckin', which paid off, clocking the 10km mark about a minute off of my PB for a 10km road race.

Once Torq gel & a shed load of water around the turn point and I was on the home straight! Or something like that. At this point it was just a case of keeping as steady a rhythm as possible and taking it on home. Having done the first 11km in around 50 minutes, I felt like I didn't really have an extra gear to go up without burning myself out so I just chugged along trying to keep my speed up as high as I could. I felt myself flagging a little around the 15km mark, and could hear one someone else hanging on my shoulder then the feet of another runner catching us up. As she passed me at the foot of a wee incline I decided I really needed to pick up the pace as it has slipped slower than 6min/km, so I tried to latch onto her heels and dragged myself up the hill, leaving my shadow behind. I never really managed to hang on, but it broke me out of a little spell of feeling a bit sorry for my tired legs and got me back to a reasonable pace. Unfortunately the blister (which had either gone numb or I'd successfully managed to ignore) had got me to subconsciously run to protect it, taking me out of the technique I've been training and putting extra pressure on my right ITB & ankle so that subsequently they both started to hurt. While I was a bit worried that the ITB was going to cause a real problem, I also knew that if I'm going to be able to do a long distance triathlon, there's going to be a lot of discomfort so I pushed on without letting the pace slip any further. Once I was conscious of the change to my gait, I managed to bring it back a little more to normal, easing the tension in the ITB.

Back round and heading into Aberfeldy, it was all about the incline, with a long drag up the hill and round and down into the finish chute where I burned a little more energy to finish strong to the cheering adulation (*ahem*) of the assembled masses & GTCers at under 1:49.

Plonking myself down I took off my shoes & socks, expecting to find a bloodied mess, instead finding a rather large blister, which a trip to the chemist got it dressed.

So, could I have gone faster? Yes I think, a little, though with the problems I had on the day, it didn't seem worth pushing to bust myself up worse.
Can I do a faster time? Aw hell yeah!.
Where can I improve? Nutrition as always, not misplacing my kit & train, train, train!

Today's Blog is brought to you by the number 666 and the song Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden