Last Wednesday was the Sprint Champs at Cranwell and I had a pretty good day!
The rain stayed away but there was a stiff breeze to contend with and to be honest, I was a little worried that my 80mm front wheel was going to be a bit tricky to keep in a straight line on any fast descents with the crosswinds, thankfully this wasn't to be the case.
After a mediocre swim (climbing out of the pool on 6 min 09 sec) I had a decent T1 and hit the new Cranwell cycle route with the wind slightly behind. The new route is an improvement on last year and allows you to get down on the bars early and stay there for the vast majority of the 25k. There were a few slight inclines, some of them into the wind, which made it testing! I knew I had to push hard on the bike to have any chance of squeezing the vet race win and I was pretty much in pain the whole way round! However, there was one part of the route where the wind was right on your back for about a mile or two and it felt great to get into top gear and still be spinning at about 95 RPM!
Out of T2 on to the run I felt pretty tired and had a sore gut, so it took a wee while to get into my run rhythm. Once in the groove I started to push on..., that was until we popped out of the shelter of the woods and onto the open fields where the wind smacked you in the face! It was a bit of a slog from then on and I was more than happy to run under the finish 'bouncy castle'! Once we had all finished, the usual 'competitor time checks' commenced! I realised it was going to be close for the vet title after Matt and I had compared our own watches and there was just a second in it! It wasn't until we checked the official timings that I realised I had beaten Matt by a mere 6 secs! How close was that?!
It was a good day at the office for me, taking the vet race, (albeit by the smallest of margins) and I even took 2nd overall behind 'Fast Daz' which was an unexpected bonus too!
I took 2 days off after the race as I had a bit of a dodgy tummy and felt really tired and weak. Thankfully by Saturday I felt a lot better and did a long swim in the morning and an 'hour of power' on the turbo in the evening.
Today was a 2 hour tempo ride (got very wet!) followed by a 9 mile run. This was hard! I am now writing this wrapped up in as much compression gear as I can get on...no pain no gain!
Train smart.
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