Longer report from Sunday if anyone is interested while I can remember.
I was going into the race hoping I might get a sub 5 but there was a lot of unknowns, I thought I had enough fitness if everything went right and the course was decent but it was always going to be close. The 3 illnesses I had after Holland set me back a bit and I haven’t really done any particularly quick running in that time as I was always nervous about triggering the hamstring. But I did do a 91 minute half a few weeks before on a tough day. The recent hassles at work hadn’t helped or the changing of the course and logistics for the whole holiday but I’d got a reasonable block of 8 weeks training in.
It was quite warm earlier in the week but I was out running to try and get used to it, but was getting cooler towards the weekend with an increasing breeze. I was actually hoping it would be warm enough on the bike, but the bonus of the warm sea would mean I wasn’t cold getting out of the water, it was about 22c in the water on race day.
Race morning was quite cool with a strong wind unfortunately, the sea looked like it should have some shelter from a small breakwater but due to the direction and height of it there wasn’t much shelter, it didn’t look that bad from the shore.
I let the faster people go first before working my way through the crowds, the water was quite shallow and we could run for nearly 50 metres. I then got going and soon hit the first turn buoy, this took us straight into the chop which was directly face on. I felt like I had a rhythm going but the first 500 seemed to take a while, eventually I got to the next turn after about 1.2k and shortly after the third turn. It got noticeably smoother then and my splits show it was quite a bit slower outbound.
I glanced at my watch when it beeped for 1.5k and was a bit disappointed, and when I got out I also noticed it had been about 75m long, I think I had a good line as well. Looking at other splits on the day it doesn’t look like a fast swim, I think the fastest swim was 28:xx although there were no pro’s there.
The swim was really nice though, lovely clear seas and you could see the bottom all the way, but it was very salty and my mouth felt like I’d swallowed a spoon of salt like cinnamon bloke on the other thread 
My swim ended up being ~39:40 which was slightly disappointing, but if it was long then taking 90 seconds off and the chop wasn’t far off the 36:xx I thought I should have had.
I knew it was a long way on the road from the water to transition so stashed a pair of shoes near the exit, a couple of others had done the same, this certainly made things more comfortable getting to T1 and probably a bit quicker as I was generally jogging. Managed to get through T1 fairly quickly and then out on the bike.
It was obvious pretty quickly that the wind was going to play a big factor, my legs also felt a bit dead as well but I was pushing a bit to try and warm them up. After about 15k we got to the turn where we got a tailwind, which got fairly quick, but at the south end the road was a bit rough and had the slight hills. When I turned back the headwind was there, certainly not the worst I’ve had but fairly significant. The next 16k or so were hard work.
I went through halfway on about 2:32 pace and knew it was going to get tougher and that because of the swim and T1 that the sub 5 probably wasn’t going to happen. The course was opening up by then, you could see a few little packs on the opposite side but no major pelotons. I was catching the odd person and sometimes someone would go past me. It was definitely a TT bike course but the road surfaces certainly weren’t like German courses or Elsinore.
On the second lap when I got to the tailwind section I eased back a bit as I knew the last 20k was going to be a grind into the wind, my power dropped by about 20W but speed was ok due to the assistance. I got off the bike in 2:37 which was about top 25% overall and in the top 20% of my A\G. And quite a few were on TT bikes.
I noticed that transition was fairly empty and had a rough idea I’d catch more on the run which motivated me a bit more to go more for position than time. T2 was fairly quick.
The run took us around the 2004 Olympic rowing course, straight back into the headwind! But I was catching a couple already and only 1 or 2 going past me. But I then had to stop for a pee as I knew it would be uncomfortable waiting for another 19k.
I got back into a decent rhythm and was making up a fair few places, after the lake we turned left to an out and back, the wind wasn’t as bad and there was a bit of shade in places as well. I was feeling alright and had a maurten gel at about 8k. For some reason the coke at the aid stations was the little cans, which made it hard to consume as it was also very fizzy so I decided to skip the coke and just have ISO or water.
I was still feeling alright at 10k, trying to keep my form and we eventually went past transition around 12k and started heading back towards the coast and the finish. The sun started to get out at this point and was quite warm. From about 14K I knew I was slowing a bit but still felt comfortable at the RPE I was putting in, but never felt like I could go much faster. But quite a few people were suffering at that point.
As the finish line got closer I managed to pick it up again in the last 2K as there was a few people really slowing down.
I think the run was 1:40:3x but the stop probably cost about 40 seconds. I thought sub 1:40 was probably the best I could get so about what I expected. I noticed I’d just sneaked under 5:10 as well.
I was a bit knackered at the end after pushing on a bit on the run, but was actually quite pleased with how things had gone. The overall run split was reasonably pleasing on the training I’ve managed bearing in mind I was one of the older runners on the course!
I don’t think the wind cost me 10 minutes overall, and the long swim and T1 wasn’t that much longer than some races.
I was 22nd in my age group out of 127 which wasn’t too bad, and as I mentioned above would have been a comfortable top 10 in M55.
The bike course was a bit tedious even without the conditions. The run wasn’t bad, just a couple of places when you were on the path and had to weave past the odd pedestrian but I’m not sure it is a race I’d rush back to do.
I did think afterwards that doing double that wasn’t very appealing at all but can hopefully train a bit better for Barca next year, otherwise it will be a miserable day!
) but I’ve had a 7 week gap between races in 2023 and 2024 and managed it ok so should be fine.
in their race bag. That’s 22500 loaves of bread. That’s a lot of sandwiches 
