Culford 2 Triathlon 2015

I initially entered Ipswich Tri Club's Culford 2 event to support a mate who was doing his first tri, but it would also help to gauge my readiness for Wattisham a few weeks later.

The event is held on the grounds of the very posh Culford School; the swim takes place in their sports centre, the ride consists of 3 laps of the public roads that border the grounds and the run covers 2 laps of the perimeter of sports fields and a long driveway/path.

The forecast was changeable throughout the week, and ended up being drizzly on the morning, it stayed dry for most of the event, however the heavens opened during the run.

When we arrived we drove along the bike route to check for standing water and pot-holes and just to get a feel for how tight/open the turns were.

Notable details;

• Swim: 300m, Bike: 21km, Run: 4km
• Transition points were pre-allocated
• I kept banging my hands on the bottom of the shallow end of the pool
• Run to T1 was pretty big; few hundred meters
• The ride had a single foot-down stop per-lap at a road junction

 I took the swim steady, as I have for the last few tris, not wanting to tire myself early on.  The person before me had dropped out so I had a clear swim.  This also meant my transition point had one less bike in it which helped prevent it from being overcrowded.

The ride went well, there was minimal standing water despite the earlier rain, although having to perform a foot-down stop each lap was tricky to get right.  Fortunately there were no cars for each of my laps so I was able to get going again straight away.

In T2 my thighs cramped horrendously.  Trying to get my trainers on seemed impossible, and was made especially hard by the fact I'd used the "loop lacing lock" tip which meant they were harder to pull on than normal.  I probably lost 30s due to this, but after much spasming I managed to get the trainers on and out onto the run!

The run went well, although it started to rain fairly heavily after about 1km, this left some of the surface fairly slippery and trying to stay upright while navigating one particular hairpin was tricky.  The course was flat apart from one evil bump, which wasn't long but was steep enough to knock all momentum out of my stride.

I finished 8th of 185 overall and 3rd of 22 in my category (Male 40-44).
Swim (300m): 5:35 (68th)
Bike (21km) + T1: 36:51 (8th)
Run (4km) + T2: 14:46 (12th)
Total: 57:12

I was approx 3mins from 2nd overall and 9mins from 1st.
I was approx 30s from 2nd in my category and and 2mins from 1st.