East Fife 2010

The East Fife Sprint Triathlon is hosted by the East Fife Triathlon club and is based around Cupar Sports Centre. The usual 8:00 to 9:00am registration meant another early start but the weather was absolutely beautiful and I arrived just after 8:00 feeling ready for anything.

I’d stayed with my strategy of using a swim time I could achieve comfortably (14:48 to be precise) and, having performed better than 14 minutes two weeks previously at Tranent, I was doubly confident that I should be first or second out of my lane. There were seven heats in total (number seven being the fastest), with heats 1 and 2 being reserved for the novice event running alongside the sprint. For those of you that remember our former colleagues that went off to form GRC Tri I was surprised to see Robert Ovens taking part in the novice event; apparently he was too late for a place in the sprint.

As I had hoped I was second out of my lane in heat 4 ( swim time 13:47, ranked 70 overall), having sat comfortably on the lead swimmers feet for the last eight lengths, and fourth out of the pool and into transition.

Transition was a little slower than it should have been as I was using a new bike helmet and it didn’t want to clip on. Never use new/untried equipment in a race situation! So out of T1 in 57 seconds and onto the bike. Apart from the first 400m, which were on a cinder track, the bike course was a relatively tame, if undulating, two lap affair. Towards the end of lap one the excitement increased as my bottle cage detached itself and fell, along with my water bottle, into the cranks and nearly threw me off. I probably lost a minute pulling the debris clear but soon got on my way. My bike time was 39:07 (ranked 81st) and as such was my poorest leg. That “lost minute” would have delivered 60th position on the bike leg.

I’d done a fair amount of brick training prior to the start of the season so I was hoping to avoid “jelly legs” as I arrived back in T2. A faster transition (50 seconds) but still not fast enough! I pushed out on the run harder than I had two weeks ago at Tranent but the run was a three lap affair with a pretty tough hill out of the start so breathing was strained early on. I’d settled my pace on the second lap and about half way around the last lap I spotted another of our friends from GRC Tri, Colin Black. I really wanted to catch him if I could, I knew historically I should be able to but he was a long way ahead. I caught Colin with about 400m to go and crossed the line in 21:58 (ranked 57),

23 second faster than Tranent. I turned to see Colin come around the last bend and was ready to welcome him across the line. Sadly, he still had a lap to go!

I was pleased with my overall time of 1:16:41 (an improvement on

Tranent) but disappointed to finish 5th in my category. I felt that I’d lost 40 seconds in transition overall and a minute on the bike so a sub 1:14:00 overall time was well within my grasp, as was third place in my category!

There is always the next time! Midlothian Sprint, 2nd May 2010 and all to play for….