A Painful PB at Dambuster!

Dambuster last weekend was my first race of the year (not counting the 'indoor' race back at MPA!) and is was great to get into proper racing and to catch up with some of the guys.

My race went ok really. I guess any race where you get a course PB has to go down as a good race! However, (there's always an 'however'!!) after getting out of the water after a decent swim, I suffered with bad cramps in my quads as I was wrestling with my wetsuit in T1. I couldn't walk for a while and just stood there, wetsuit round my ankles, gulping down my electrolyte drink in a vain attempt to shake off the cramps! Once I'd struggled to the mount line, I got on my steed but the cramps were too bad to pedal properly until I got to the main road! It was soooo frustrating! Once I got moving though, I felt good for the rest of the bike leg.

After an average bike leg time, I had a good transition and set out at what felt like a steady run pace, with the intention of picking up the pace once I'd found my run legs. All was well until I got to the dam...then the cramps reared their ugly head again! My quads were very painful and each time my feet hit the floor, the pain was nasty! As it was obviously cramps and not muscle injury, I decided that I would just grin and bear it and hope that it would all go away! It didn't.

I finished the race with a burst of speed over the last 200m, crossing the line with a respectable run time of 35:09, which only served to cramp up my hamstrings too...as you can see from the pain on my face! Beautiful!!

So although it was a more painful race than it should have been, I actually enjoyed it!

To try and work out what may have caused such bad cramps, I have been going over my race prep and race food to see if I had done anything differently...drank too much water...ate too much/too little? But I reckon it just came down to being tired after a lot of travelling and not enough sleep in the several days leading up to the race.

This weekend is the Tri UK Shropshire tri. This is the first time I've done this race and I'm looking forward to racing without cramps...hopefully!

Race well and good luck to those in Spain for the weekend!