I had more-or-less my best result at a triathlon at Salisbury at the weekend, about as good overall as I managed at Wimborne in September 2005 when I was super bike-fit. I’ve done Salisbury Fast Twitch before too and I like the bike and run routes.

Result: 21st/178 overall
(S: 10th, T1+C+T2: 37th, R: 17th)
Date: Sunday 13 May 2012
Format: 400m pool swim, 29km undulating road bike, 6 km road/trail run
Race website: http://www.conceptsport.co.uk/
Full results: http://conceptsport.co.uk/downloads/Results/Salisbury%20Triathlon%202012%20Results.pdf

As well as 21st overall, I was 5th/19 M35-39. I’ve invested more in the running than the the cycling so far this year, and I only need 2 or 3 more minutes (off an hour and a half) to be finishing top-10 overall and be up there with the winners of my age group category. There’s hope I can keep improving because the overall winner was in the 45-49 age group! (Actually this is the first time in a while I haven’t been beaten by anyone older than that, or any of the women! :-))

All my new triathlon kit (new tri suit, new running shoes) has definitely helped too.

The whole weekend was an experiment because we booked a DBB night in a hotel in Amesbury so whole family could come and be a part of the race. We drove round the bike course and went to Stonehenge with the kids on the Saturday, after their swimming lessons. They stayed up late to have dinner in the hotel restaurant, and went to sleep on the sofa bed together good as anything. They really didn’t want to get up when I collected and brought our hotel “early breakfast bags” back to the room at 06:15 though. They helped me get all my stuff ready at the Salisbury leisure centre and watched my swim and cheered me through transition onto the bike. I’d estimated the timing all wrong and they missed my bike-run transition and my sprint through the finish line, but it didn’t matter. Em had a hard day wrangling I think, but all in all it was a fun weekend; we stopped and had pub lunch in North Waltham on the way back.

I’m vaguely thinking about having a go at a tri with an open water swim soon, so I went down to the Eastleigh lake this morning. It was fun. Very murky, and my ears still feel a bit full of algae… but I enjoyed the rhythm of the laps.