Fleetwood Sprint 2019 - Race Report

I think this one surprised me.

I was not up for it. Not really. I had little motivation to race. It was wet, it was Blackpool(ish), I was grumpy McGrump face.

I didn’t even shave my legs.

But, kit bag went in to the back of the car with the bike and off we went.

Did I mention it was wet? And windy? And soggy?

And it turns out, one of the best races this year.

Race was 400m, 20k, and 5k, everything flat, including the water.

Pool swim was 2 lengths, duck and swim. I’m in two minds about this system - I’ve seen it in a few places, and … it’s as good as any other? It solves some problems, but introduces others. Any pool swim sucks to be honest. To make this work, they reduced the lane length slightly and that meant that the frog adjacent to you would be kicking you in the chest at the same point for eight repetitions. In open water, you can make some space. In the pool, you’re stuck.

I may have got lost in transition. Actually lost. Like “dude, where’s my bike”, kind of lost. There’s a first time for everything. I came in to transition not where I was expecting, and ended up in completely the wrong set of racks. This cost me a minute. The mount point was uphill, which was … novel. I decided on a nice, safe, kerbside mount.

The bike course was gold. It’s laps, which I would usually despite, but only three, the roads are closed, they’re wide and the road surface is pretty damn good. Oh, and it’s near perfect flat. It may also be anywhere from calm-ish to hellish windy, but I’ll take that. I stared at the power meter for 37 minutes, keeping the needle where I could no lower than 180W. This made for a happy bike section. I reckon there was more in there, but I’ll take that as the base line.

T2 was a little less rubbish. In, shoes, out. I met up in the first few hundred meters with a gentleman a few age categories higher than mine, and we agreed to pace for a bit. Which was good until I couldn’t hold his negative splits anymore. And then I kept him ahead of me, but marvelled at his ability to keep increasing pace. The run course was along the beach-front and back again, a straight 2.5k out and back. I managed a sub 25min 5k, which I was very happy with.

Clubmates were at the line on finishing. It makes a difference.

I … liked this race. It may have been damp, it may have been windy, but it was oddly good. It’s a good course for landing PBs on, if the weather is right.

(Waiting for final times)

Final time was 01:15:20