September 11th 2010, Kenmare.
1900m swim, 83km cycle, 21km run.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so the story is told here :
To add a few details, the day started nice and early with the alarm going off at 4:55 in the Kinsale Bay Hotel. Fellow entrant, roommate for the night, and sometime Sunday morning cycling buddy Redmond Burke was ready to go with his "HTFU Triathlon Club" T-Shirt. Slogan - "If your eyes aren't stinging, you can keep going" (or something like that). The pints had been flowing and the craic was good at the Fine Gael convention in the hotel, so Redmond didn't get much sleep listening to the hoors. I slept a bit better -ready to devour the porridge laid on by the hotel at 5 - really nice of them. The 30 or so triathletes who stayed over were all bleary eyed and tracksuit clad down in the restaurant, while the last of the bleary eyed Fine Gael crew stumbled their way to bed.
Down at transition zone in the pitch dark at 6 was a bit surreal, and the usual last minute job before a triathlon is of course a trip to the toilets, so, that too was bit surreal as the portaloos were pitch dark and smelly!
Anyhow, all last minute tweaking done, off on a walk to the pier to get this thing going. With impeccable timing, Redmond and I arrived at the start line just about last, and AFTER all the important announcements were finished. Probably some warning about tides....but we were to find that out for ourselves.....
The swim was commonly referred to afterwards by my fellow competitors as "brutal". The organisers changed the swim course twice in the last couple of days before the event, with some worry about tides.....turned out they were right to worry.
Theres a bridge over a narrow point in the bay in Kenmare, with a lough on one side and the open sea on the other. We had to swim under this into the lough, and by the time we were doing that, the tide was coming out. Seeing as the whole lough wanted to empty out under the narrow bridge, the current seems to get pretty strong. I didn't notice the problem really at first....I just kept on swimming towards the bridge and periodically thought the bridge should be a lot closer by now, but sure, it must be an illusion of some kind.
When under the bridge, I looked up, admired the brickwork, took 6 or 8 more strokes, looked up, nothing much had changed, 8 more strokes, looked up...now damn...theres definitely something wrong here! I decided a quick spurt was in order or I just might be here all day!
That worked grand and I swam away, not really aware of the time and enjoying the swim as the morning sunshine broke though.
I had expected a time of 40 min or less for the 1900m, but when I saw 54 mins on the clock when I got out I thought I must have been dire! All the bikes will be gone! No...plenty of bikes! Everyone else having just as much trouble. In fact there were a number of people fished out who couldnt get through the bridge at all!
Out of 300 entrants, my swim time was 66th, which I'm very very happy with!
22 didn't finish the swim. Bummer!...Conor Harty tells me he heard of some people getting outta Kinsale straight after the swim and not even bothering to collect the bike. Must've been annoyed!
In transition zone I took a leisurely 5 minutes to get through. I was kinda thinking, "its a long day, whats the rush?". Having dried between my toes and donned socks, shoes, gloves, jersey, stuffed with gels, bananas and a Turkish Delight, off I went.
The plan was to conserve energy for the run, so I took it easy on the bike. I hadn't done enough training for this event (who had?), so getting a final result of DNF (Did not Finish) was a real possibility. Losing patience with this strategy after 5 minutes on the bike, I took off past half a dozen slower riders, over some recently resurfaced (in best County Council manner) road. The back wheel went flat....drat! It took 11 minutes to get back on the road, so any remaining thoughts of overcooking the bike were forgottem....lets just finish this thing!
The bike route was superb. One smallish climb 200m before Laragh. The descent down this was brilliant and I went past lots of riders with my super aerodynamic riding position and my quality wheels....and my light usage of the brake levers! Good fun!
Then the Healy Pass. Approx 300m. Not really a tough climb, especially with fresh legs, but its got a nasty little kick right at the end. The descent is full of switchbacks, and the first or second of these nearly caught me out. that put manners on me - which was just as well, because there were about a dozen more to go and a couple of riders were squatting on the roadside looking forlorn. Hopefully only punctures, but I wouldnt rule out the odd spill.
Into Adrigoole, then back up the coast towards Glengariff. This road is wide and smooth and straight. After a long long drag, we started a descent where the bike just took off. Suddenly I was doing a land speed record on a bike of 73kph! Never went over 60 before! Fantastic! No feeling of danger either because of the quality and straightness of the road.
Tried to eat an energy bar after this but in my carefulness not to drop even the corner of the wrapper as litter, I dropped the whole thing! Thankfully, the previously mentioned Turkish Delight had also been stashed away - just in case - and well, this was the case! A water bottle was taken on at the water station in Glengariff, but no "sports" lid, so another delicate operation pouring from bottle into bidon - no accidents this time.
Then off up the other climb - the Caha pass. Same height as Healy,pass, but spread over 9km rather than 6, so no pain here either! Maybe a bit more pain would have helped my finishing time, but .... why?!?!?!
The tunnel at the top is a cool way to finish a climb, and the descent was alright. A lot of poor quality surfaces though on the lower slopes, so care had to be taken. The last few kms into Kenmare were slghtly downhill, but into a headwind, so not as easy as I had been looking forward to.
My bike time was 3:13, (219th) and considering the puncture, I'm pretty happy with that. Avg speed not counting the stop was just over 27kmph. Bike position was 219th, so no worry was caused to the front of the field by me!
Right, get rid of bike, helment, grab the 330ml Fruit Shoot bottle (blackcurrent) stolen from the kitchen cupboard and off we go. I took a High-5 Energy Gel at the start and at every water station (also 2 on the bike), and that seemed to do the job and never turned my stomach.
I had a good chat with Jason from Mayo for a good few kms, helped pass the time. I was feeling pretty good and eventually drifted off in front of him. The course was an out and back. I think I emptied the tank after about 8k. The turnaround point just seemed to take forever to get to. Thinking when I turned that my new pal Jason would be miles behind, him and about 6 others were right behind me! They didn't take long to go past me so I was slowing all the time!
I just kept thinking that I may never do this again, and I wasnt actually feeling all that bad, so you've just got to keep going. For some reason the deal with myself was that I wouldn't stop during the run, which I managed to do. However, I noticed a few people stopping...then I'd pass them, then they'd start again and go past me and turn eventually into a small dot in the distance. It struck me that maybe my tactic wasn't foolproof.
With the out and back course you get to see all the competitors at one stage or another. Nice (but depressing!) to see the leaders tearing down the last few km as I started the course. You appreciate what a different level these guys are on! When I was about half way back, a couple of guys approached and I thought these are the backmarkers....no!....2 fit guys went belting past on their warm down! Jeeez!
Anyway, I made it to the funish line eventually, and that was that!
Run time was 1:02 out and 1:05 back for 2:07 total which was a rank of 218.
Overall time of 6 hours, 21 minutes, 12 seconds to finish just off the podium in 182nd.
The winner Bryan Keane only needed 4:06:25, which was an amazing 23 minutes ahead of Eric Wolfe in 2nd place with 4:29:31.
Buddy Redmond is training for the marathon so a 21km run should be no sweat to him. Unfortunately, the gels and power bars he took on the bike went down very badly and his stomach was in bits for the run. He couldnt really "run" - but he did endure it and completed the course so fair play! He was in foul humour (by his standards!) at the end.
Not much left to do but return to the hotel for use of their health club - just what the tired and sore body needed!
A great day. Might never do it again, but at least I've done it once!
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