It seems so very long ago that we first started talking about entering events and building up to them. There’s been so many injuries, trials and tribulations. Of course there are. What story of a build up to a race goes smoothly?

This weekend we finally made it to the first races. I think it’s fair to say that Gabby was cool as cucumber and Liam, well, stressed. Very stressed about it, particularly the swim, partially correctly, we’ll come to that later on.

Prep

The night before we both set about sorting our kit, Gabby getting her shorts and t-shirt out for the run. Liam with this:

With the Elemental Tri Series race being in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, and that being 2 1/2 hours drive away, we made the sensible decision to let Mikey stay at the grandparents and get an early night. Now, that seemed fairly fine for one half of the PBRF duo, the other, stressing out as it was struggled to sleep, especially combined with multiple parties going on in the local area…

The 4.30 wake up call (or alarm as it’s often known) came, bleary eyed we struggled for coffee to get into our blood stream as fast as possible. We packed the car and off we went. The journey, luckily, was completely fine. No stress or worries, bar the constant nail biting.

We got to Grodzisk, and took a leisurely amble to the venue. Arriving nice and early definitely had huge benefits to the queue averse. We managed to both wander in to the registration area to collect our race numbers and assorted other goodies. No queue, bonus! Then it was on to getting the bike into transition, aside from the slight issue of some of the rules, putting helmet on before going in to rack up the bike etc. Again, smooth, no queue, bonus!

Order of the day from here was 9am Gabby’s 10km. 11:55am Sprint Triathlon start. It’s now 8am so we had a little time to kill, a lot of nerves to go through and unfortunately not many nails left.

Gabby’s 10km

Making our way to the start line for the 10km race, the heat really started to pick up, by the start at 9am it was already way past 22C and by the finish certainly seemed closer to 26C with high humidity. After what seemed to be the longest countdown in the history of countdowns (like they were waiting for it to get a degree hotter or something) they were off.

It’s fair to say that the adrenaline kicked in straight away. This meant it was very difficult to keep the pace in place. At one point, the watch was showing 4:46 instead of nice and easy 6:30. This fast a speed, however, was not sustainable at all – the heat was too much. With the sun directly in front of you it felt like the tarmac was melting from under your feet. Even with the route being nice and flat, Gabby struggled a lot with keeping the 6:00m/km and then 5:45min/km pace in the latter stages of the run. Result: 01:02:22 and not 00:59:00 that she hoped for.

Massive thank you to all the lovely people standing outside with bottles of ice cold water, pouring it over our heads and backs. It also feels that the shout out is needed for all the volunteers standing in the sunshine cheering us on. I honestly think they (Dogoń Grodzisk Mazowiecki) were one of the best crews we’ve seen. 

Then there was a lovely surprise, aside from the lovely medal, we were sat on the side of the lake, Liam about to go for a warm up swim and then this happened:

That’s right, Gabby got second in her age group. She kept going on about how there wasn’t a huge number in the age group but in fact, with the heat, she did incredibly well.

The Triathlon

Just before Liam was about to get all wetsuited up an announcement came over the tannoy. Prior to the race, there wasn’t a huge amount of open water swimming done (twice in fact) and both of those swims were in said wetsuit.

So what did the announcement say, I hear you ask. It said the swim is without wetsuits, yes, wetsuits were forbidden. Luckily there were 10-15 minutes to jump in the water and see if Liam could open water swim without a wetsuit. (He could, just).

So, race time! No nerves at all…

The Swim

The swim, as aluded to earlier, was pretty brutal, 750 metres and it took 22:23. There was a lot of jostling, kicking, punching and dragging going on. The swim was around two lakes joined by a narrow gap under a bridge, about half way through the swim.

With the speed differential between Liam and the Olympic athletes (starting 5 minutes later) he was caught just as he went under the bridge in the narrow gap. That was pretty terrifying having so many wetsuited strangers swimming so fast, so close.

Eventually after a few fights with water plants and some more forgetting how to swim, Liam was dragged up and out of the water into transition one. It’s a pretty long transition from the swim to the bike rack and then from the bike rack to the start line for the ride. That took 2:25.

The Bike

Out on the bike course, things settled down nicely. With the 20km being pretty uneventful though, in a draft legal race, lonely. With the swim being so bad, the bike was an opportunity to make a few places up and try to regain some pride. In the bike leg 25 places were made up, which felt a little bit better.

There was also a lovely point that the front of the Olympic distance race caught up with Liam so he had a great seat to watch the battle, along with dreaming about having such a nice bike!

It was an out and back course that was relatively flat, with a little wind and a few spots of rain as a storm started to move in. Thankfully the temperature had dropped a little so good (comparatively) process was made. The bike leg finished in 41:25.

Into T2, another quick change, along a fairly long transition in 2:08, into the running shoes and off for the quick run to finish this race off.

The Run

The run loop was simple and with fantastic crowds cheering everyone on. Liam had a stitch that he couldn’t shake for most of the run. That held him back a little but he finished, fairly happy, in a time of 25:38.

This meant the overall time for the Triathlon was 1:33:59. Before the race, Liam would’ve been happy with sub 1:40:00 so that was a really good result. The bike in particular being faster than anticipated by a fair distance.

There was a question, what does this mean now? Was it enjoyable, would we do more. The answer, absolutely yes! Currently we’re now planning next steps and seeing what the next adventure will hold!