We’ll probably know a bit more after this weekend. I’d be surprised if he won TBH but if he can be up there for the run I would be impressed with his season so far. If the weather isn’t too wet I’ll get down into Leeds to watch. Hoping Jonny has a good outing. Be nice to be there and watch Alex Yee run in person.
He’s such a nice kid as well. Totally dispels the “you must be an arsehole to succeed” mantra.
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Looking forward to Leeds, should be some good racing and questions answered (although more raised), feels like the first real ‘A’ ITU race of the year and a course where different scenarios can unfold.
I’ll also shudder though when memories of that first one in Leeds, which I raced as an AG-er, resurface.
Rubbish weather?
IIRC it was freezing and it took hours to get the baggage back after the race so people standing around freezing in trisuits for hours on end
Sounds like Manchester Marathon the other year, and St Polten was also pretty bad if you were tardy making it to the marquee, back in the day.
yes i went and got my chip refund of 35EUR and bought a jumper with it!
I’ll dig my race report out which covers the farce, bags were just part of it
Leeds ITU race report…
Well that was an interesting days triathloning….
I had this one down as a pre wimbleball tune up, so no taper and hoping to get a good training session in. However as the race neared a bad vibe began to build, the original company running the event had folded, another one came in at late notice and the information given was late, confusing and contradictory in places. With the fine weather due to break as well, I decided to not even race on my ‘A’ set up Canyon/tub wheels etc and just ride on my old Felt.
Day before was a degree of faff, but I got through it without too much bother. Probably about 5 hours in all, but there was rugby to listen to, and I took my time. The most irritating thing was they didn’t give you your transition bags until you entered the transition areas, so you couldn’t pre pack and then rock up and drop them off. So you had to bring your gear in another bag and then swap it. Not a huge issue, but irritating. T2 was a area of wasteland, packed gravel and hardcore which was going to be fun running over in bare feet.
Race day dawned still, damp but NOT RAINING!! That was as good as it got….
Pre race set up was ok, again irritating that your ‘street’ clothes bag had to be collected way over by the swim start and then you handed it in pre entering the swim start. For many, it would be a long time before they saw it again……
Swim 26:32. The swim was ok. Water pleasant, course interesting and the waves were pretty small. I think there were 42 odd waves of 125 odd, leaving every 4 minutes. Each wave was mixed ability so the waves mixed over the swim. I swam well, pretty much went through the two waves ahead and according to the OH about 10th of my wave to exit. Decent.
T1 7:32. Another oddity of the race was having to repack your Bike bag with wetsuit et al and then run with it and your bike before handing the bag over at the mount line. That was interesting, saw a couple of tumbles.
Bike 1:05:18. Things started to go awry here. Bike course was busy. It was an out and back T1 to Leeds, back out to just before T1 and then back in, basically dividing the road in half for the out and back parts. Course was technical, few hills, sharp turns. But the problem was it was too busy. As noted, waves every 4 minutes, mixed ability meant you were never amongst faster riders. To be honest I knew this would happen, and the race head was not there. Any time you put the hammer down you’d get held up. You had to be careful all the time, more about picking a line than racing. I’m not some crit rider who thinks a crash or two is an occupational hazard. I did see someone lying in the road, not moving, just being attended to. Power was well down and the whole thing felt a bit of a let down.
T2: 2:35. Running across T2 f*&king hurt! And I was in the far corner from bike entry.
Run 43:15. Madness. Bit of point to point, and then you joined a 1.1 mile ish loop and did 5 laps. 5 bloody laps, with a race entry of 5,000….I weaved through a thicket of human bodies for a while then realised racing was pointless. There was a narrow dead turn at one point and so many people you would end up shuffling around, like rush hour on the tube. I jogged around at 7 minute mile pace, heart rate similar to marathon. The end was a relief. It was over….except it wasn’t……
Overall I did 2:25:05, a reasonably solid Olympic distance time especially factoring in massive transitions and the fact I did not really gun it.
Post race.
Made my way to bag collection quickly as I really wanted to get changed get some food and then get to watch the elite races. However when I got there only the early waves’ bags were there. I was the 9th wave of 42, so you could see already there was a long way to go, and having got only the bags of what the first 4-5 waves across in 2.5 hours, it was not going to end well….
I went off for half an hour, came back and by then crowds were building around bag collection so I stayed to wait. A lorry would arrive every 20 minutes or so with a 2-300 more bags. I waited for an hour and a half. I was number 2081 and in that time they had gone from waves 4-5 to 9-10. By this time of course, thousands more had finished and were holding up their race numbers in desperation 15-20 deep around the bag collection tent. The mood was good humoured when I left, not sure it could remain like that. They’d got about a quarter of the bags across, current rate of progress suggested they would finish about midnight.
I then went to T2 collect my bike and queued for another 20 minutes to get out as they did not have enough people/exits. This also being when only a few of us were lucky enough to have our bags and be able to leave, so they were not dealing with the rush that could have happened. Some 3 hours after finishing I got back to the car changed and headed back in. I was one of the lucky ones, to be honest.
A few were wandering about with race numbers in the 5000’s and asking what was happening. I could only relay bad news: don’t even bother trying to collect your bag. Watch the elites, go back this evening. Women’s race was underway and then they announced that all bags from 3300 onwards were not going to be bought over so you had to go back to Roundhay to get them. That was probably less than half of the bags. They’d had a problem, they’d given up trying to solve it. This was halfway through the women’s race, so 4-5 hours after those people would have finished racing. Meaning you would miss the elite races, having waited around. Awful, awful awful.
They’d bigged this event up to bring triathlon to more people, quite what the novices in the sprint wave (later starts) would have made of it I’ve no idea. If any are ‘inspired’ rather than put off for life, they have my utmost respect. WTC/Ironman do cop a lot of grief, rightly so in some cases but they really try and give an athlete experience that makes you want to come back. Their business model depends on it. Quite where ‘athlete experience’ featured in the planning of this race I’ve no idea.
I’ve been lucky and privileged to have some magnificent race experiences in my time; this was an exception.
Hope everyone else had a better day….
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So. Does that mean AB bins off Tokyo? It looks like he tried to animate the race on the bike a couple of times, same as JB. But thta pack was always too big, and the breaks were unlikely to yield much.
Don’t think anyone would’ve picked those three for the podium in such a deep field! Gomez rolling back the years as well!
He said in the interview after that they had to change and get the training environment correct, not sure what that means
Certainly given the comment in the interview he’s been doing WTS focussed training for 3 months, and was still so far off the run pace that’s got to be a definite possibility, but no point chucking the baby out with the bathwater, it could’ve just been a bad day and he did work hard on the bike, perhaps he’d not recovered from last weekend. If I were him I’d do one or two more just to be sure, and if he’s still off the pace then so perhaps the move to IM comes earlier.
The podium was full of the guys who kept the powder dry on the bike.
I got the feeling he was going to bin Cork. Said his training was very much focused on the Leeds race for last few weeks.
When asked about Ironman he gave a very surprised ‘er possibly’ answer, as if he had no intention to race it but couldn’t quite let the organisers down on National TV after they’d been bigging his appearance up last week.
Remarkable from Gomez!
Yep, going from just outside top-10 in Kona to a WTS podium within 8 months is pretty impressive at age 36. I guess the hard course suited him - very savvy race not wasting too much energy on the bike relatively and not getting carried away on the run either.
Well, it’s also his second podium of the WTS and he already said that he is going to try win the title. Obviously not easy as it stands, as there are two sprint races that don’t suit him that well.
Is Gomez the only man to have 2 ITU podiums this year? It seems to be wide open on the men’s side, and for once Zafires got beat on the women.
Be good to see both Alistair and Jonny to get some consistent racing in, they seem to thrive on it. I was dubious when I saw Ali in for IM Cork but we’ll see. I don’t think he’ll lose much by doing it. He can get back to racing Euro World Cup races, Edmonton and maybe the relays in Tokyo.
ETA: I see Jonny says he doesn’t know why he didn’t perform better as he thought he was in great shape going into the race.
Yes, only Gomez. It’s a very strange year in terms of performances. I think in both Hamburg and Edmonton we will see Alex Yee doing well again.
christ - don’t remind me of the 1st Leeds event - what a frigging nightmare that was from everyone’s perspective. it’s a completely different beast these days and everything works so much more smoothly. sure, there’s still too many age groupers on the bike course but everyone us TOs speak to now, has nothing but praise for the organisation. from the ITU’s viewpoint they see it as one of the key events in the WTS schedule and they give us Brit TOs lots of love and kisses for delivering a great event - no negatives (bar bike crowding) from the age group racers. Leeds is on in 2020.
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Was you up there this weekend?