Carlisle Triathlon 2012

Carlisle Triathlon was my second sprint tri. 500m swim, 40k bike and 5k run. I had also managed to persuade my mate Jonathan to enter. He was pretty nervous, pacing around looking for people he thought were slower and fatter than him. 

Here's how my race went: 

Swim 12.57
The swim was tough, I had estimated 12 minutes but could not keep up the pace and ended up getting overtaken by the two other people in my lane (I caught them up later). The swim was 25 lengths of the 20metre Morton Academy Pool.

Transition 1: 2:27
Well, it was still slow, I really didn't think I hung around too long. At the Cockermouth Triathlon, I saw people with plastic boxes for their kit. I though this was a great idea, stopping your kit getting wet if it rained so I got one. Apparently, when we were all waiting to swim, they announced that these were not allowed and moved them all away from the bikes. This caused me to spend a bit longer in the first transition as I was looking out for the bright pink top of this box.

Bike 40:51
I really pushed it on the bike, I don't think I stopped pedalling once. I overtook about three people and was not overtaken myself. The course was pretty flat. It was also wet, there were big puddles at different points. The course seemed quite complicated and I was grateful for the marshals at every corner.

Jonathan coming into transition as I am going out

Transition 2: 1:01
Coming into transition, Jonathan was sat down by the box, having just finished his race. A minute for T2 is acceptable to me.

Hannah getting a bit excited seeing me finishing the run.

Run 24:30
I felt like I was taking it easy on the run but my time was still good. I managed to pick up the pace after about 2 miles and took over the people who had beaten me in the swim, that felt good. There were a few more people, in all I overtook about 10 people on the run.

Overall Time 1:21:48 - 81st place out of about 150

So, with Carlisle and Cockermouth, that's two sprint triathlons, Carlisle was overall about 30 seconds faster than Cockermouth - slower swim & run in Carlisle but faster bike and transition. That's a really good benchmark to work from. I'm hoping to do some triathlons with open water swims at some point, that's the next big step for me. Hopefully I have converted Jonathon to triathlons, he said he had a great time and slept most of the way home.