Antwerp top tips

Rob’s top-tips for Antwerp IM 70.3 competitors
1) Keep your tools and spare tubes to hand when blowing your tyres up at 5.50 AM before getting the 6.17 train into London. That way, when one of them blows you won’t have to unpack your rucksack before you can change it.
2) Aero helmets with long pointy tails and big rucksacks don’t go well together when riding a bike.
3) Don’t book your bike in for the Eurostar. It costs money and the check in for freight is so slow that despite getting there an hour early you’ll end up having to run to get your train. Just pack it in a bike box and take it as luggage.
4) Don’t book yourself onto Eurostar the morning after the schools break up for the summer holidays.
5) Don’t stay in the Ibis Antwerpen Centrum hotel. It overlooks a charming square filled with delightful pavement cafes that, come the evening, will fill up with drunk Belgians who will keep you awake until 3 AM the night before your race.
6) Don’t assume that someone knows where the pedestrian tunnel under the Scheld is just because they a) live in Antwerp, b) say they know where it is and c) give you clear, confident directions in good English.
7) Don’t assume that you will be able to buy any useful items at the race expo. My list of things that I wanted to pick up at the expo was CO2 cartridges, elastic laces, wetsuit lube and gels. I got gels.
8) Every time you spot a cashpoint in Antwerp, take out at least 100 Euros. There are so few that this is the only way to ensure you don’t run out of cash.
9) If you have to watch a Tour de France stage with the commentary in foreign, the Sporza (Flemish) commentators are more entertaining than the La Un (French) ones (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgv4fnVsI14 at about 2 minutes for a classic example)
10) When going out for dinner with your fellow Turbos, make sure that at least one of them has a clue as to where the restaurant is.
11) Don’t get to the race start too early on the Sunday, you’ll just have more time to listen to bad Europop on the PA and get cold while worrying about the wind.
12) Flemish heavy metal is better than Europop.
13) Put your timing chip on your left ankle, not the right, or risk being told off by the world’s most pernickety race referee who wanders around T1 telling people off. I’m not even going to mention the toobsh.
14) If the wind is coming from the left of the race start, and there is quite a bit of chop on the lake, start the swim on the right, not the left.
15) When swimming, don’t draft off people who are actually swimming to the rescue boat.
16) The last bit of the swim is a little confusing if you’re not very clever. Swim towards the big red structure near you that is the swim exit, not the small red buoy in the distance that you went past about 100m after the swim start.
17) Don’t make yourself overtake people who are faster than you on the bike just because you don’t like turquoise.
18) If the wind’s strong enough, no-one can hear you scream.
19) Don’t assume that the drinks bottles handed up to you on the bike have their lids screwed on. Check before you slurp or risk a refreshing Isostar shower.
20) There’s a massive pothole about 8km from the bike finish. Don’t ride into it or your saddle will move such that you will be unable to ride on the aerobars for the rest of the bike leg.
21) Don’t take your feet out of your shoes like usual before T2. The Arenburg Forest style pave of the second transition area is very hard to run over barefoot.
22) Your run kit will be by your space on the rack in the bin bag you gave it to the organisers in. Someone may have tied lots of extra knots in it for you. Tear the bag open, don’t feel that you have to undo all the knots.
23) Once you’ve got your run kit out of the bag, if you notice that your socks are inside out, listen to the voice in your head saying “just put them on stupid this is a race not a WI outing”. Pay no attention to your normally very latent OCD tendencies that are saying “But they’re inside out! The outside bit needs to go on the outside, otherwise it’ll be inside, and then the inside bit would be on the outside”.
24) Afrikaans swear words don’t work well in Flemish, interestingly.
25) Run faster.