The weather Gods decided that we should be blessed with heat, and the day of the race was the hottest of the year so far. We very reluctantly climbed into our wetsuits and shuffled into the lake for the swim - with hindsight I think I'd have preferred to do the swim without the wetsuit but the organisers didn't really give us the option. Once in the water it was bearable and we assembled at the start line. Two laps for the half distance and four for the full. Because the field was small it was a fairly civilised swim without too much aggro, and route finding was mostly easy except for a couple of parts where it wasn't 100% clear which of two visible buoys was the one to aim for. The water was patchy with some areas being nice and cool and others being like a warm bath. I was out and over the timing mat in 40 minutes, a bit slow but judging from some of the comments online it seems the swim was a bit long so nothing to worry about really. Wettie off, onto the bike and out of T1 for the 90km bike leg.
The race is based in a newly built science and technology park next to a big power station overlooked by the Dartford Crossing bridge, and the race organisers have managed to negotiate some sort of deal with the local council etc. to allow almost all the racing on closed roads, including a stretch that is one side of a dual carriageway. That's the good bit. The bad bit is that the section of the race that isn't on the dual carriageway features 14 speed bumps followed by about a km of road with traffic calming measures that consist of one side of the road being blocked off leaving a series of short sections of road about 2m wide to go through - effectively a set of narrow chicanes. This would be fine but it was an out-and-back section so there were bikes coming the other way at speed, and to make matters worse this section of the course was not closed to traffic and there were cars trying to get through these sections as well. Add two dead turns into the mix and it is not a bike course for a fast split. Still, I got my head down and was OK for the first couple of laps until I started feeling a bit dry. I had drunk the water I'd planned to put in my bike bottle before the race because it was so hot, thinking that with an aid station on each lap I'd be able to get a drink soon after starting. Unfortunately, because of a series of mishaps this didn't happen for a while. On the first lap I didn't expect the aid station to be where it was and I missed it. Lap 2 I was going too fast and fumbled the bottle hand off, and on lap 3 I spotted a guy at the end of the aid station who was holding a bottle, slowed right down and held my hand out and he looked at me as though I was some sort of idiot - he wasn't anything to do with the aid station, he was just holding a bottle for his mate. Great place to stand, buddy. Lap 4 I finally managed to get a bottle, which was good because it was still very hot and I'd been going for a couple of hours without a drink. Slurp, and then thump thump thump over the speed bumps, which were all big ones with cobbles on them to add to your enjoyment.
I wasn't feeling great but kept pushing the pace as much as I could and it slowly got dark - there was a good view over the Dartford marshes towards the end of the stretch on the dual carriageway and it was a nice sunset so that was nice. More drinks, more speedbumps. The main effect of the speedbump battering on my bike was that the front brake caliper came a bit loose and by about lap 5 every time I went over a bump it started rubbing and I had to reach down and move it back. The number of cars on the chicane stretch seemed to increase as the evening went on and there was some dodgy riding going on by people with, I guess, little in the way of imagination. Finally, and with much relief, I got to the last lap and enjoyed saying goodbye to the dead turns, the speed bumps and the chicanes. As I turned off the loop and headed back to transition I was profoundly grateful that I wasn't doing the full distance with 18 laps - there were 126 speedbumps on the half distance, so all the people doing the full distance would have 252 crunching bumps to get over. Bike split was 2:49, not as fast as I'd have liked but OK given the course and what was probably some fairly bad dehydration in the middle of it. Shoes on in T2, ran off, realised that my sunglasses, which were useful for about half the bike, were still hanging off my number belt, run back, gat rid of them and off into the darkness.
The run course was three laps which were meant to be 7km but were about 500m short each time. To say the route was convoluted is something of an understatement, and since it was not well signposted and featured about 2 marshalls who knew what was going on it resembled some sort of fiendish logic puzzle that the organisers had added to the race, a bit like those stories you hear from military special forces selection courses where they exercise them to exhaustion and then make them do maths or solve a Rubik's cube. I managed to work it all out, more by luck than advanced reasoning ability but a fair few of the people on the half distance race did not and a lot of people went astray - I understand that they got it sorted out for the full distance though, which is definitely A Good Thing; you really don't want to be confusing your runners when it's 3am and they're only just managing to stay upright. Speed-wise I was OK for a few kms, ticking them off at 4:30-4:40 pace but the lack of taper and late hour slowly caught up with me and I was down to 5 minutes plus per click fairly soon. The run was made less grim by the opportunity to shout at various people on the bike and by a small group of very vocal ladies who were cheering everyone on with apparently unlimited enthusiasm and volume - how they kept it up I do not know. There was also a lady who had pitched a tent by the run course and would occasionally poke her head out like a snail coming out of its shell and give some encouragement. The first time this happened I didn't realise where she was and got very confused about the strange voice from nowhere.
It was still hot on the run despite being fully dark. There was one drinks table, but because of the aforementioned convolution of the run course you passed it three times per lap. There seemed to be only one or two people manning it and they weren't really on the ball, at least to start with - you had to stop and work out what was what, and they seemed to be concerned to stop the coke losing its fizz by only pouring it out in small batches and putting things on top of the cups. Not really what you want. I drank a fair amount of the coke despite the bubbles and chucked a lot of water over myself.
Eventually I got onto the last lap and kept plugging on. I was really knackered now but with the smell of the finish in my nostrils I was feeling cheery and tried to pick the pace up, which didn't really work and it was soon back to plodding. Round the lake for the last time and I finally hit the last piece of road and ran into the finish, run time about 1:40 I think and total time 5:14. Not bad, not as fast as I'd have liked but OK and definitely a good bit of training if nothing else. I ate a banana, had a splendid cup of coffee, got out of my slimy trisuit and into some proper clothes and hung around long enough to give Tim a big cheer - first off the bike for the full race and he went on to win. Nice one.
