Another fine morning with TVT!

Result: 4th/268 overall
(S: 12th, T1: 13th, C: 8th, T2: 34th, R: 7th)
Date: Sunday 4 August 2013
Format: 400m pool swim, 20km undulating road bike, 5km off/on-road run
Race website: http://thamesvalleytriathletes.co.uk/concorde-triathlon/
Full results: http://www.dbmax.co.uk/assets/results/1500/original/Concorde.html
Photos: There were a couple of photographers out on the course, but I haven’t seen any pictures posted online yet.

Thames Valley Triathletes put on another great edition of their annual sprint triathlon based at Bradfield College. I really enjoyed it last year and won my first trophy, for 3rd overall, but I knew that would be tough to repeat this year. After the highs and lows of May and June, I’ve had a much less focused July and didn’t prep or taper for Concorde, so today was more like the first session in the next proper block of training. 🙂

That being said, I wanted to give it a good go, as today was my first chance to get a definitive marker on how much progress I’ve made in triathlon in the last 12 months, because the course was exactly the same as last year. (OK, the T1 “swim in” timing mat had moved to the top of the flight of steps, and the “bike out” timing mat had moved 50m further down the path out of T1, but that was it.)

So, I’m very happy to have posted an identical swim split (5:59 on my watch) with less effort despite no time in the pool at all this year, to get out of T1 thirty seconds quicker, then to go 2 km/h faster on the bike (36.1 km/h), and still knock 20 seconds off my run split (3:55/km pace on the mixed terrain route). I think those improvements fairly reflect the work I’ve put in over the last twelve months. Even so, I was right to expect an even higher standard this year and the times put in by Patrick Brown and Chris Birch for 1st and 2nd overall were phenomenal. When I finished, the results printer had me a (distant) third overall, but Nick Burdett in the final wave pipped my time by 5 seconds – it’d have been fun to have started side-by-side and chased him towards the finish line!

It was a sociable morning too, with a good turn out from Tri2O, Team Kennet and other local clubs and of course the excellent TVT marshals to chat to. Lots of people had done one or more of the qualifiers for Hyde Park so we swapped stories before and after the race.