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| Swim start. I'm the one standing up in the middle towards the rear checking my watch. Photo from Bajandiver |
The last time I visited Holme Pierrepoint was about seven years ago, when I was running the Robin Hood marathon. The race course came to the lake at HP about halfway up the southern side and we then had to run up to the western end of the lake, back to the other end and then all the way up the other side. It was a stinking hot day and there was a strong westerly wind blowing. When I reached Holme Pierrepoint I was in 17th place (NB this tells you more about the strength of the field than the strength of my running) and going well after about 19 miles. When I left Holme Pierrepoint I was walking and being overtaken by children and elderly ladies. Thus it was with some trepidation that I came to the scene of my earlier humbling once again to test myself beside (and this time in) the 2km long lake. My race preparation wasn’t good: the season had started off well with a couple of sprint races where I managed a PB, but then everything just got a bit pear shaped – I missed a half-ironman in May because I was sick, then June was a nightmare at work after which I had to go to Borneo for a couple of weeks, followed by a week’s recovery from horrible jetlag and then a brief frenzy of training. Overall I averaged a feeble 4.2 hours per week of training average since January 1st. Nevermind, I told myself, you never know how these things will pan out and I did IMWA on about half that training.
I spent the week before the race in my usual state of pre-race hypochondria, convinced that I had a sore throat that was going to turn into a chest infection and stop me racing. My twitchy state wasn’t helped by messages from Tim who had gone up to Nottingham during the week telling me that the lake was full of weed and in a terrible state. Having aborted an open water swim at the Prince’s Club just a few days ago because there was so much weed I wasn’t too excited about having to drag myself through lots more of it. My only consolation was that hopefully the faster swimmers should carve a path through. We left the sprogs with my parents on Friday night and headed up to Nottingham on Saturday morning. Parked at HP, got out of the car and the first person I saw was none other than Mr Male, in his TTTC trisuit, faffing around with his bike. We went round to the NWSC, I registered, sorted out my kit bags, dropped them off, twitched nervously and went back and checked they had everything in, racked the bike, went to the race briefing which was made more entertaining by the race director, obviously already rather tired, trying to rein in his sarcasm when some people asked rather dim questions that mainly revealed that they hadn’t read the race information.
Had a nice dinner at Pizza Express with Pam and Tim, back to our delightful Ibis hotel and its population of football fans and hen parties and off to sleep. Since it was only a 10 minute drive to the venue I’d planned to leave at 5am which should give me plenty of time for pre-race messing around before the start. What I hadn’t planned for was losing the car-park ticket, which led to a period of quiet desperation until I found the car park attendant who cheerfully took some money off me and let me out. It was a beautiful morning at Holme Pierrepoint once I got there and I took my time getting my wetsuit on etc. – too much time, because I then didn’t have time to pump my tires. Fortunately they were still perfectly rideable but I was a bit worried about the increased probability of pinch flats. Still, nothing I could do about it so no point in worrying. Ten minutes to the start and I made my way to the second start bay (1 hour to 1 hour and 20 minutes), had a few practice splashes and bang on 6 AM the hooter went off and we were underway.
The swim was really no fun at all for about the first km. Lots of bumping and barging, no real aggro but just too many people around for comfort. I couldn’t see any of the buoys because we were swimming into the rising sun and so all I could do was just keep the bank on my left. The weed wasn’t too bad, I found: there were some annoying clumps that I had to fight through but the main problem was just all the people either swimming into me or that I was swimming into. I couldn’t get into any sort of rhythm: it seemed that every time I took more than three strokes someone would get in the way. Round the turnaround was nice and then we had the fairly interminable swim back. I got onto someone’s feet for a while and took the time to admire their lovely ballet-dancer like pointy toes, until I got a bit close and found that they had decidedly un-balletic long sharp toenails. Slooooowly the buildings at the finish line got closer and I could track my progress from the distance signs on the bank for the rowing races. In the last 400m I finally got some nice clear water and managed to get some good swimming done at last. As I came to the swim exit I was pretty despondent, thinking that there was no way I was under 1:20, but as the nice men pulled me out of the water my watch was reading 1:12. Wahey! I have to admit that my first thought was “great! Now I can really slack off in T1” but I soon put that out of my head. Another nice man helped me off with my wetsuit and I charged into the changing tent to total bedlam with loads of people everywhere. I found my bike kit bag and tried twice to get into the male change area only to find it completely full. No worries, I didn’t need to change anyway so why was I messing around? I dumped the contents of my bag on the floor, stuffed my wetsuit in, grabbed everything, got rid of the bag and wetsuit and ran round to the bikes. Number belt, shoes, helmet, sunglasses, energy bar in each pocket and I grabbed Serenity and headed out on the start of the bike. Once round the lake and off into the wilds of Nottinghamshire.
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| Off round the lake on the bike. Photo from Bajandiver again. |
The bike course for the Outlaw has been described using adjectives like “fast” and “flat”. I found it to be neither. You ride out about 12km from HP and then go three times round a big loop, and no part of the loop is flat, with constant short climbs and then a series of long drags up towards the northern part of the loop. This is then followed by a good few miles of gradual descent on good roads where you can maintain a nice high speed, but overall the hills, combined with a fair number of tight bends mean it’s quite tough if you’re trying to ride fast. Obviously it’s not a really hard or hilly course, but it’s certainly a lot harder than, something like IMWA or the Challenge Barcelona course. I put in a fair effort on the first lap and finished it with an average speed of 31.7 kph, overtaking a lot of people which was a pain – I only saw a small amount of real drafting but there was a lot of (probably unintentional) riding in loose packs that made it really hard to get by people if you wanted to ride clean. I saw quite a few marshals on motorbikes but they didn’t do anything to break the packs up which would have been helpful. Lap two was fractionally slower and psychologically quite hard, plus my saddle came loose on one of the climbs. Fortunately the legendary Paul L from tritalk was spectating just where I had to stop, dressed for some reason in a poncho and sombrero. I scrounged some Allen keys (I had some myself but they would have taken a minute or two to get to), tightened up the saddle and off I went again. Lap 3 was good, I kept the effort up and felt good the whole way round, going through 100 miles in 5:07. The overtaking business was a bit of a pain again because by the second half of the lap we were lapping some riders. I had a bit of a nasty scare when I got to one of the aid stations to find they’d run out of sports drink – I had visions of the kind of wall-hitting that had happened to me in Barcelona when I missed a drinks station happening again, but I got to the next aid station with no trouble. Finally back to the Lowdham roundabout and this time instead of turning left for another lap I zoomed straight through on my way back to transition. This was when I realised how many people had only been on their second laps because the road was suddenly empty whereas before it had been full. Back to Holme Pierrepoint was mostly fun although the dodgy roads, gravel and speed bumps towards the end of this section slowed me down a bit. Finally turned back into the watersports centre and was surprised by the dismount line – only just managed to unclip without falling over.
Final bike time was 5:47, exactly the same as my bike split from Barcelona. This one was much more satisfying though because as I’ve said, it’s a deceptively hard course: only three people went under 5 hours, and I kept up a sustained but manageable level of effort the whole way round. Nutritionally I did it all on three gels and probably five bottles of sports drink. The two energy bars that I’d stashed in my pockets to munch on both fell out before I got to the start of lap one.
Into the change tent for T2, sat down next to a guy who was munching an energy bar and asked him how he was doing. He looked back at me with empty eyes and mumbled something and I realised that I was in the presence of the living dead and I left him to fight his own battles. Shoes on, spent way too long messing with the Garmin and off I trotted. The first part of the run is just a run round the rowing lake, followed by three laps of an out-and back along the Trent with a further lap of the lake after each one. Once again I was running on a hot day by Holme Pierrepoint rowing lake – redemption or another disaster? I went off fine, feeling a bit tired but not too bad. The first three kms were fine and I was going at about 4.30 pace. That seemed a bit fast and I eased off to about 5.00 per km. This still seemed a bit fast and I slowed down a bit more. I glanced at my heart rate once and it looked high but I’ve often found that the Garmin gives some strange spikes occasionally so I didn’t pay attention. This was probably a mistake because on reviewing the data later it seems that not long after I started the run my heart rate went right through the roof and stayed there for about twenty minutes. Not sure what it was caused by but had I realised I’d have slowed right down until it went back to normality: as it was I kept up the effort, told myself I was just having a bad patch and tried to run through it. Once round the lake I saw Pam who got quite excited then it was onto the out and back and a big shout and high(ish) five for Tim as he ran along on his way to 6th place overall. I was feeling OK-ish when I got back to the lake, but then I had a stop for the loo and straight afterwards I got nasty abdominal cramps that reduced me to a hobble/walk: Holme Pierrepoint won again.
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| On the run before the wheels fell off. Please admire my ripped quads and don't notice my receding hairline. |
Hobble, walk, hobble, walk. I finally managed to get the cramps under control and got back to something approaching running but by now I was melting in the heat and feeling like death. I ran from aid station to aid station and taking walking breaks while I poured water over my head and swilled coke. The second out and back by the Trent was hard and then the third was just mind over matter as I made myself keep going. Finally I made it back to the lake and set off to the far end for the fourth time. I swung round by the final aid station, took a little walk break, girded up my loins and headed for home. Turning left into the finish chute felt gooooood and I crossed the line in 11.16.31 following a 4.06 marathon (a PW for the distance!). I felt fine after the race, ate some pasta, picked up my gear and had a fabulous shower. I then met up with Tim who procured some marvellous beer: even nasty lager tastes good after a day of slurping isotonic long-chain maltodextrin solutions.
I was a bit disappointed not to manage a sub-11 finish but on later reflection I’m happy with how I did. My swim time was a real surprise – lots of people seem to have had fast times and it’s possible the course was a bit short but I think it’s unlikely. More probably the very calm lake coupled with the simple course and easy navigation just led to lots of people going fast. The bike was great, a real breakthrough ride for me with a good, solid consistent effort the whole way. Ifell apart on the run but I think I was basically just undertrained and there’s an easy remedy for that next time. Even given the crash and burn on the run I finished in 146th place out of 714 finishers. Compare this with 453/1023 at IMWA and 439/1282 in Barcelona and I’m definitely moving up the rankings. Best of all this time I finished the race without a screaming pain in either achilles tendon, unlike the last two IMs I’ve done, and this time I should be able to run in the next six months rather than limping around and whinging.
This was the first year that the Outlaw has happened, and the race organisation was superb: pretty much everything was spot on, and all of the important things. The marshalls and all the other volunteers were superb and the whole thing was a real success. The UK now finally has a really well-run, properly organised ironman distance race that charges about half as much for registration as the competition and I would recommend this to anyone wanting to go long in the UK.
