A welcoming club on the North West of Edinburgh
Strathclyde Standard 2015
By CoachKev | Published | No Comments
We arrived late Saturday afternoon sometime after the team relay event that Sally, Emma, Roy and Kev had competed in, to glorious sunshine and light winds giving me the opportunity for quick recce of the course. Strathclyde loch was cordoned off by the Commonwealth games boom to build a 500m rectangular swim 3-lap course, the cycle was 7-laps of an undulating out and back course and the run 2-laps along the edge of the loch.
Sunday morning was a complete weather change from the previous day with overcast sky and a drop in temperature – still it would make the water feel warmer! The event was split into two waves with the seniors and vets starting in wave two accounting for around 200 of the 325 competitors. This meant for a fairly civilised start time of 9.15am with the loch side transition closing at 8.15am.
We watched wave one complete the swim and head off on the bike course before listening to our race briefing and heading off down the jetty for a short warm up in the 15degreeC water. Having been warned about how slippery the “slipâ€-way was I gingerly walk down what turn out to be a very short slip way and ungracefully fell vertical down in water – shock over I got a few strokes in before being told to line up at the jetty. Ten seconds later and we were off, arms and legs interlocked, barging and swimming over ensued gradually calming down until the first buoy and then, after lap one, settling into a nice rhythm. A busy swim but room to manoeuvre and find space to draft and get a good position – the final lap, and a kick in the ribs by a guy beside me deciding to breast stroke, and I started to spot the slip way out. Peeling off the wet suit as I jogged along the jetty and spotting the bike, wet suit almost off but a significant build up of small stones stuck to my wet feet which I attempted to clear before pulling on the cycle shoes, only to put my foot back in the stones and go through the whole routine again.
Out on the busy bike course with a few hundred riders of mixed ability from full blown TT bikes to straight bars. A round- a-about turn at one end and a turn in the road at the other, lap one done and I slid my elastic band counting system up my drops. A minor altercation with a kamikaze red squirrel almost led to disaster as it ran out and collided with my front wheel before scooting back to the verge. Lots of spectators helped drive us around the course 7-times before heading to T2 and those pesky stones to manage before pulling on socks and running shoes. Out of T2 and a gentle start to sort the legs and breathing but into a head wind along the loch side. The first kilometre was well off my target pace so tweaked the pace before entering the trees and some short sharp hummocks to negotiate before sweeping back to the loch edge, turn and a welcome tail wind to take us back to the start before starting the next lap. Lap two had to be quicker than lap one if I was to get close to my 40-min run target so I pushed on to hold the tail wind pace into the headwind. Now I could see the finish flags and just the turn back to transition and back into a head wind to finish some 2hrs 16min later.
