Athy Triathlon report.

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Athy Sprint Traithlon 5th May 2011

Our Tri adventure this year was to go to Ireland.  My nephew lives there with his girlfriend who is from Ireland. They are physiotherepists. Last summer I challenged them to do a Triathlon with me, thinking' Uncle Andrew could show them how it's done', but of course since then they trained like mad didn't they.    Anyway, we had a great journey over on the ferry and stayed in a B&B right in Athy (pronounced A-thigh), the venue for the triathlon.

The Irish are certainly into triathlon in a big way. It was a w/e. of racing with Olympic and Middle on the Sat. and Sprint on the Sun. Saturday had 900 people entered and Sunday 700 so they just closed the roads!!!   Great stuff, no cars or lorries to worry about (no problems of unintentional draftin behind an artic lorry on the A303!!).

We were led to the swim with a Pipe Band and lots of flags etc. The swim was in the river, 750m with 100m up and 650m downriver (hence my reasonable time of 11.42) and in waves of 30ish.   So up the purpose built ramp out of the water, with music and cheering in the background and into the Town Square(which was completly closed off for the event). T1 was er! good 2.02. No socks on the bike now, but not into the rubber band format yet but still reasonably fast?  into peddle mode. This was my first race on my new bike (Pinerello) so not sure what to expect. I had brought my old bike too, just in case, so the car was brimming with wheels etc.(on the ferry the man parking us below decks asked us if we needed help with the wheelchair!!
Anyway the bike was a great success (it is a little bit 'about the bike', isn't it?) and I purred along the slightly undulating road  (in other words there were no 'real' hills) in 35min.

T2 was ok,  still wearing socks on the run and needing a brief stop to (you thought I was going to say pee) stretch out a troblesome calf muscle. The run took us along the bike route to start with and then down onto the towpath of a canal for an up and back, passing other runners very much elbow to elbow in some places. My run picked up as I progressed and I finished (I think) strongly in 25.07min. Overall 1hr 15min.

Any speeling mistakes are actually the Gealic spelling of a similar word!!

Cheers!

Andrew

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Author: Andrew Daniell - 28 June 2011 11:18