All normal people are in bed and asleep at 6 AM on a bank holiday Monday. Good for them. I will be standing around in a lycra suit next to a swimming pool in Hampton because tomorrow is my first race of the season: race one in the
Thames Turbo Triathlon Club series. My preparation has been, hmmm, questionable so far. I've done some work on the turbo trainer, a bit of running and the occasional swim but there have been lots of interruptions: work, resurgent achilles tendonitis on occasion and then bursts of apathy to slow things down as well. I've taken steps to make up for my lack of form though: most importantly I've got myself a really nice new bike. I picked up the frame nice and cheap from someone on Ebay: the poor guy had got a new frame as part of an insurance deal but had then come into some financial trouble and had to sell it. I felt bad as I took it off his hands but once I started stroking its shiny carbon curves the guilt passed.
I already had the wheels, and I got the components from a variety of more or less dodgy internet suppliers, ending up with a big pile of small expensive pieces of alloy and carbon fibre and a frame. I managed to conquer my fear of headsets and bottom brackets and assemble it into a working bicycle over a few days and only made a mess of one thing, the cable housing for the front brake. Et voila! A splendidly shiny aero super bike. This does put me into an unfortunate position because I have now moved myself into the category of "middle aged bloke on a really flash bike". Add the aero helmet into the mix and my race is doomed: I am looking forward to being passed by people on mountain bikes, small girls on sparkly pink bikes with streamers and old ladies on black sit-up-and-beg single speeds.
Swimming wise I'll be fine though. I got a bit distracted by work and apathy for a while but I went on Friday morning and then again this morning. This means that I have now swum 2/3 as much in the last two days as I did in the previous month, so I should be fine. Running has been continually interrupted by the achilles tendon but in the last few weeks it's got a fair bit better (touches wood) so I went and ran the Bushy Park 5k yesterday. Unlike my normal strategy of running the first two kms way too fast and then spending the rest of the race grovelling along with my tongue hanging out I forced myself to run the first bit more sensibly and had the pleasant experience of finishing strong and passing lots of people. The whole course was saturated and slippery and I ended up in a comedy sprint for 16th place with mud and feet flying in all directions. Final time was 18.58 which isn't fast but given the slime we were running through I'm happy with that.
Swim will be down to my usual standards then. Bike might be OK and the run should be alright. I'm one of the last people off so there should be plenty of time for the prevailing crosswinds to get going, and I'll enjoy running while most other people have finished and the marshals have all got really fed up with hanging around in the cold. As I type this Fabian Cancellara is rampaging up the Bosberg in the Ronde van Vlaanderen just to give me some perspective. At least there aren't any cobbles tomorrow.
