Sorry, January your other Hyrox.
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Great result well done .
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I see !
Initially disappointed after going considerably faster at Oulton than the year before recently, but sled pull in particular seemed very slow at this one with many people doing PW times .
I had no more to give on the day.
More importantly I really enjoyed this one
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friend of mine who lives in Chamonix did it in 2:56:55 - his PB by 1 second! he was 5th in his AG (he’s 51) and 39th overall.
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This is littering taken to the extremes @jeffb
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That’s not good, and the other issues after the late change of venue. I was glad I recce’d the swim to transition and stashed some shoes.
TBH a lot of the Athens area was like that but they are a big organisation.
Wonder if it will be the last race in Greece for a while.
That’s odd.
Did you see any XPO Logistics trucks around? They can be hard to miss…if you didn’t then I’d suspect they used some other less reputable events logistics company.
Hmm, good point, can’t remember exactly but think it looked more like a local logistics company 
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A week on now, but first race in 2 years last Sunday at Marbella 70.3. I’d entered as I still had some residual covid related credit with Ironman Spain. 2024 was the last time to use it before it expired.
Training is definitely more difficult as a parent, and trying to squeeze things in. I’ve not had a good run of injuries with a fairly bad achilles issue before my last race (Wales 2022) which had prevented running at all in the preceding 6 months before that, but the first year of parenthood had seemed to allow the rehab to work and settle. But then throwing myself into swimming in the new year, I overdid it and got an ECU tendinopathy in my left wrist around Easter. That was horrendous. Couldn’t pick up my daughter, change her, or anything. Rehab for that had me out of swimming for nearly 3 months (right at the point where I was making great progress - my last proper swim before it flared up was a 23:xx 1500m which is solid for me). I was then making great bike gains with no time for swimming, set a new post-parenthood FTP best before a holiday, then came back and pulled my hamstring in the parents race at the nursery sports day! Just not a good year that then kept me out of biking and running for some time. So training was “disrupted”. Ultimately, I just wanted to get a race in and finish.
I managed to get all three disciplines into some kind of shape before flying out, but with a challenging bike course I really didn’t have any major expectations. BBS was predicting over 3hr20. A very hilly bike course is sub optimal when carrying 5kg of extra weight, and lower watts.
Skipping through the pre race stuff (lots of deliberations - first time back in my race wetsuit - hope it fits? - first time back on my race wheels - are the latex tubes OK? Has the rubber degraded?) the big deliberation was weather. Sunday was predicting quite a lot of rain. As it was, it came Saturday night and that added the concern of whether the bikes di2 would be OK in transition. Temp was predicted to be quite low, and with 50mph descents, I was debating gloves and a gilet.
Anyway, into the swim and I positioned myself at the back of the 30min pen. I swam well and was passing lots of people. Yet at the first main right turn (that was less than half way) my watch buzzed for 15mins. I could tell something wasn’t right. I was still passing lots of people. At 35mins my watch buzzed and we still hadn’t even turned back to the shore which was a long way away. Something was definitely off. I think I was maybe reassured that I just knew I was swimming well. I heard of lots of people who came out of the water, looked at their watch, and were exasperated with their time. I came out of the water and just wanted to see the distance. 2,660m! What a shit show! Especially as this was the 70.3WC “dry run”!
We met someone in the airport queue on the way home who got timed out. She was not happy. She was adamant she knew she could do the time all things being equal. 44:57 for me. So a proper long swim!
T1 was slow. I went with gloves (no gilet) and they took ages to get on. My bike was right next to the bags, so no ability to put them on whilst on the run. Transition was not setup fairly. I ended up having to run about 500m with my bike across T1 and T2. Had I had a race number 20 digits larger, I would have had to run with my bike for about 50m total. No big deal for me, but for pointy end people, that’s not really right.
Anyway, still pretty slick apart from the gloves.
The bike was always going to be hard. Lots of big climbs and rapid descents. I overtook a lot on the short flat run to the climbing, but as soon as we went uphill it was like I was hardly moving. People fling past constantly. I actually felt I was riding OK. I crested the big climb 6 mins ahead of the BBS prediction, so it was definitely not like I wasn’t trying. The decents were fun, and I overtook lots. Need to sort out my front mech though. If I went into 56-11 the chain popped off the outside. It happened twice over the ride. The first time I was able to position it and then shift to small and get it back on. The second time on the homeward leg it properly popped off but managed to reach down and lift it into a potion where I could reset it. I was trying to restrict myself to 56-12 max.
The descents are so fast and had it not been windy, I’d have properly flown down them. But certain sections in particular was very twitchy and I had to come up onto the base bar. I was still passing loads though just in an aero tuck with no pedalling. Hit the turn point about 9 mins up on BBS.
It got hard after that. The “cold” I’d worried about was non existent. I was cooking. Especially on the climbs with no wind to cool you. I also hate out and back courses, especially climbing ones. It’s just so boring, as well as demoralising when you know every bit of descending means coming back up the same climb later. The final descent was fun, but I only ended up 10mins ahead of BBS overall which definitely shows I slowed over the second half. Final time of 3:10:27.
Out onto the run and I felt great. For all of 500m. Just on feel I ran a ridiculous 3:45ish per km pace. And then it started to bite. I slowed. And I slowed. And I slowed. And just over 2k at an aid station I stopped to walk and thought I was in for a long day. Gave myself a talking to and got back to running. The awkwardness in my legs slowly dissipated as the ks ticked by and I finally got up to something respectful in terms of my usual pace. It was a slog though. And was still relatively hot (coming from a cold uk spell). The other thing was it was another boring out and back. Along a fucking sandy beach path. No basic tarmac at all. You couldn’t get into any rhythm and it felt like I was slipping and sliding all over the place. I’m happy I mentally fought back to run the entire rest of the way with no further walk breaks, but I don’t think I can say I really enjoyed that run. Finally crossed the line in 1:43:20. Nearly 20mins slower than my last official 70.3 pre-covid, pre-injuries, and pre-daughter. A big mental reset of expectations really required I feel!
Total time of 5:46 dead. Comfortably my slowest ever race. Previous longest time was 5:23 at the first Weymouth 70.3 in 2016. My first ever branded event. This was definitely a tougher course (massively slower on the bike plus the 10-15mins lost on the extended swim). But I at least now have a soft post-parenthood pb to beat!
I’d gone intending to head along to the slot ceremony “just in case”. As it was, this performance had me in 60th in AG so the reality was it’d never roll that far even if lucky. But also, I had no interest in going back to the WC after racing there, so I didn’t go. We enjoyed a prolonged evening at an Argentinian steakhouse instead!
I spoke to others in the food tent and they said they liked the course. I didn’t. Climbing is definitely my weakness (I’m weird and like flatter full TT efforts), but I enjoy Mallorca, Nice, Wales, etc, where there is climbing but you’re riding loops. Out and back just doesn’t do it for me. It’ll make the WC more interesting to watch next year having done the course, and I think will make for a good pro race. Not technical descending though.
Overall, great to get a race in, but it made me realise 70.3s are hard when you’re not in amazing shape! It was nice to go away with my mum and get some 1:1 time, but some domestic racing on the cards I think in the shorter term. And maybe a focus on running races. Just a lot less time demanding than fitting in the bike rides!
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I hear you brother. This was the reason that I got into pure running after IM Wales. First road and then trail and then ultra. But have done a tri a year for the last 4 years (after 6 away from the sport).
Nice write up though and good to hear you still enjoyed it. I, personally, think it’s good to have a crap race every now and again. Especially if you’re unprepared. It reminds you that you can get back to old ways. It reminds you that, even unprepared, you’re still way up on the average. And it reminds you to race for fun and not pure performance/time sometimes.
I 
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Great work and well done with everything that hasn’t quite gone your way in the build up.
Hopefully that lady who missed the swim cut off kicks up a fuss along with some GPS data backing up the hugely extended swim.
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I have a race tonight called Big Night Out. Starts and finishes at WADAC in town. It’s nearly all trail, heading out on the SDW and looping back. I’m in for the 22km but I haven’t run a step in 8 days, so might drop down the 12km. A few of the pensioners in my club are doing the 12k and they’ve not run trails at night before, so I might just go with them for a laugh.
LO has her first XC for Hampshire League later in Aldershot 1.75km and it will be her first race in her new XC spikes. 
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Wishing you lots of luck and fun too FP - hope all the niggles don’t ruin it for you!
Let us know how you both get on…LO can let the others come second 
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Thanks Anna. This is County stuff, so they are all ‘LOs’ at this race. Elbows out 
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LO came 9/65 in the U11 girls and was first home for WADAC 
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Wow, that’s a brilliant result. Congratulations LO, hope she’s very proud of herself 
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That’s fantastic! Congrats to her! 
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Thank you. They were shoved right at the end of a long wide start line with a 90deg left in about 100mtrs time. They looked like they were plotting a strategy. 
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Smash it FP
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