Not to start the blog off with any excuses but this was my first triathlon since September 2017 as I have had to pull out of 4 others due to injury. In the lead up to this race I knew my knee was fully recovered but my shoulder had been a bit on and off so I was going to go as hard as I could and see how it went. Without trying to put pressure on myself, this was also the World Championship qualifiers. The race consisted of a 750m open water swim, 20km draft legal bike (closed roads) and a 5km run. I had a lot of friends that I was racing against and I knew that if everything went well, we could make a good day out of it. Derrick (Flying Monk Tri Club member) and I made it to Cardiff and managed to find the registration tent. We picked up our timing chips, swim caps, race bibs and number tattoos and found a spot to get everything prepped. Here we met with the other members of the Triathlon Club and also Ben Sommerville and his dad. Committed blog readers will remember that Ben and I have raced a lot together and also met up for training etc. Everything was ready so we headed in to transition to get set up. About a week ago I realised that I had put down the wrong DOB for my entrance and so the organisers thought I was 45 which meant I would’ve been in a separate wave to the rest of my age group. Rather luckily, they hadn’t changed my race number which meant I was racking my bike in a separate position to everyone else in my wave meaning I wouldn’t have people all around me going in to T1. Very coincidently I was given the Bib number 246. See if you can work out why that’s a funny number for me to have. After setting up, we watched the elites, including some of my Zoot Athlos Team members and then headed over to the swim start to warm up and hear the briefing. Thanks to Ben’s dad, my wetsuit was only half way on before I realised I had left my running shorts on. Meaning I had to take the whole wetsuit back off before putting it back on! On Thursday of last week I received my new Zone 3 Vanquish wetsuit which I bought through Jason Tait. Rated 10/10 and apparently the best wetsuit ever! Before long we were headed onto the start pontoon and jumped in to begin our warm up. The water was warm, the suit felt fast and I was pumped. After the 5 minute wait, the race started and it was an absolute melee. Arms and legs were everywhere. I tried my hardest to keep pushing forward but I got punched and kicked in the face twice and my goggles got elbowed meaning they dug into my eye for the rest of the swim. One negative bit of feedback for the race organisers was that all of our swim caps were green and so was the exit funnel, making it very difficult to sight it. So I just followed the feet in front and hoped for the best. I crossed the timer mat in 10:45 (25 seconds behind Ben and lead pack) and then headed out to T1 where I removed my wetsuit, put on my helmet and then ran with my bike completing t1 in 52 seconds. Another complaint would be that the mount and dismount lines for the bike were not very visible at all and no one was telling you where they were. Someone needs to provide some very bright orange paint! After a fairly superb bike mount, I started to make up ground on the faster cyclists. I knew I needed to take advantage of being able to draft. I asked the closest cyclist around me if he wanted to work together. “No thanks” he replied. Then onto the next person, this was someone in a Bath Uni tri suit who I now know is called James Reeder. We then caught up with someone in a Green Tri suit called Samuel Woods and we worked very very hard to catch up with the chase pack. We had a very organised group of three and all put the effort in to catch up. (I was very lucky to be in a three with these two!). After roughly another whole lap (it was a 4 lap bike course) we caught up with the chase pack which included Ben Sommerville and James Hodgson (National AG champion) . Now came the tricky bit, trying to organise the whole group to work together instead of just one person sprinting off and ruining it. This worked for a bit but with all of the corners it was hard to sustain. And there was always one bloke who could never keep his racing line and kept ruining the chain gang so I had to give him a talking to!! The same guy was also cutting inside on the hairpin bends and almost caused a crash! (another talking to). With about 2 km to go, I told Samuel, James, Ben and James that we needed to break off our pack of 12 after the next corner, they all agreed but someone else must have overheard and sprinted immediately which completely ruined our plan. I turned a corner and came straight onto the dismount line (I’ll blame it on poor signage) and had to rush to get one shoe off and then unclip the other one and take it off by hand which wasted a lot of time! I then racked the bike, removed my helmet, chucked my running shoes on and sprinted off…for about 20 metres. My legs felt worse than jelly. If anything it felt like I had been hit by a bus after completing an Ironman! My chest was really tight, my hammies, groin and back were cramping and I could barely breath. This was rather frustrating as I saw the rest of my bike pack sprit off into the distance. Over the course of the two lap run I got overtaken at least another 50 times and crossed the line in 1:09.28. 7½ minutes slower than James who finished 2nd overall. I really can’t describe how terrible I felt on the run but I know it is due to lack of training!!! Positives- No shoulder pain on the swim, my new Cervelo S5 is rapid and I had the 4th fastest bike split of the qualifying race and I had no injury pain on the run. Negatives- Really bad sunburn, calf cramp after the swim and start of the bike, lots of cramp on the run and quite bad dehydration. All in all a brilliantly organised event and a wonderful day out. I am very glad to be back racing and running pain free and I am excited to see what is to come! Huge well done to all of my friends and team mates who completed the race. The weather made it tough but I had a brilliant day out and hope to return next year. Here are the blogs for: Ben Sommerville James Hodgson Of course a huge thanks is due to all of my sponsors and supporters for fixing me physically and helping me financially- LPSEVENTS Sarah Fellows @ Dyer St Chiropractic ZOOT ATHLOS racing team Pedal Potential South West Swim Performance Cycles Cirencester Athletics Club The Flying Monk Triathlon Club To keep up to date with everything I else I am getting up to throughout the season, check out my social media pages- Facebook page- Luke Campbell Triathlon Strava- Luke Campbell Triathlon Twitter- @lukecampbell246 Instagram- @lukecampbell246
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Luke CampbellHere will be a monthly review as well as occasional race updates Archives
April 2019
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