Outlaw Half

Yesterday my partner gets a leisurely 12.30 start for her triathlon. This morning it’s 4:15am when I awake to the sound of rain pounding on the roof. It’s the day of the third Outlaw Half and the first to come with bad weather. Joy.

I suppose the rain doesn’t make an awful lot of difference to the swim. Although the wind might, as there does appear to be a few waves scuttling across the swim course but again you can’t really tell once you’re in there. In any case, I’m capable of near drowning in a mill pond.

The swim is the usual combination of elbows in the face and feet in the stomach, just all served a bit colder than last year. My swim disappoints a touch, four minutes down on last year at 43:06. I’ll blame the weather.

My swim to bike transition is down on last year too, I take a terribly leisurely six minutes. I’ll blame the weather for that too.

The bike is my favourite bit and still is, even in the rain which has now become intermittent. Every time you think it’s stopped, it comes back to give you another drenching. It’s not as bad as last year’s Sundowner and again the rain isn’t really the problem unless you’re one of the poor guys who overcooked it and finished the race in an ambulance.

The problem is the wind. It was often a case of simply head down and pedal aggressively into it. All you could do was pin your gaze on the bike and the rear end of the person in front of you, which are all helpfully named so that you can curse ‘Wayne’ when he zooms past you and disappears off up the road. You don’t follow too closely of course because that would be classed as drafting or alternatively perving. Nonetheless I would like to pay thanks to the bottoms of Tamara, Rebecca and Rob! Whom kept me going but whose faces I never saw.

My bike is four minutes slower and yes, I’ll blame the weather.

I had promised myself to do a decent swim and an awesome bike, so that I could take the run steady to preserve the knees for next weekend’s Ramathon, which I really really want to do.

Having done a less than decent anything so far, Plan A is already in the bin. I try and have a strong run whilst trying to run on the grass as much as possible to protect my knees. Yes my run is also slightly down on last year and I can’t blame the weather any more as it’s fined up now.

So I miss six hours by as much as I coasted under it last year, yet still had a brilliant time as this is such a brilliant well put together event.

I finish and immerse myself in the post-race wonderland, where there is post-race chilli/curries/pasta etc on tap, teas, muffins, folk willing to rub their hands over whatever you like (within reason) and Erdinger alcohol free everywhere. Actually it’s a shame they couldn’t have got some Erdinger not alcohol free in for afterwards.