Tri-Adventure
A Learning Curve at Tri-adventure
23.03.2010
Lord Byron and I learnt three hard lessons at our first race: 1. There is no point in having loads of gear if you’ve got no means of carrying it,
2. Don’t stay out drinking until 2am the night before and
3. Tape your nipples!
For this race, I arrived with a shiny new Camelback filled with water, snacks, gels, and puncture repair kit, the carbo loading was of the pasta rather than Stella kind and two plasters were protecting our still sensitive nipples safely from attack.
Registration done, race number attached, bike racked in transition, smorgasbord of snacks stuffed into my bike shoes and I was ready; 30 minutes early! Into the hall I went and grabbed myself a cuppa and sat down to study the map.
Well, study may not be the right word, I simply stared at it whilst the people around me had highlighter pens and were notarising theirs – all at 8.30 on a Sunday morning. When I have the confidence, I will ask them what they were doing!
So, with 5 minutes to go the competitors assembled 10 meters behind the start line! Being British, no one wanted to be right at the front, all being far too polite and ‘no you, please, you’.
The race director, in his clipped private school accent, asked everyone to move forward and an adventure racing hierarchy revealed itself. The tighter the Lycra the closer to the front you were.
Determined to beat my last score I focused more on navigation than speed and sure enough it paid off, an hour later I was back in transition having collected 7 of a possible 10 checkpoints. To my amazement, two individuals have cleared all 10 checkpoints, around 11ks, in under 50 minutes - both of them must have too much time on their hands and actually train.
Ignoring the smorgasbord of beautifully home cooked goodies provided by my supportive wife I headed out on the bike – I quickly picked up two checkpoints headed up to checkpoint 13, unlucky for some, not on this occasion, unlucky for every sodding competitor heading towards it!
What a stupid and irritating bridleway. I know mountain biking is supposed to be tough and hard and challenging, but not when it’s reducing you to a sweaty mess, raising the heart rate to uncomfortable levels and impacting on your almost perfect race! I was one of several competitors who reverted to being a 2 year old and had an uncontrollable tantrum.
I was determined not to be late back and I wasn’t. The points I’d spent close to 2 hours accumulating, certainly weren’t going to be taken away from me this month! The free cup of tea, bottle of water and t-shirt made the hard work all worthwhile and my score was significantly better than the month before.
I’ve still much to learn and will add a highlighter, permanent marker and swish new mountain bike to my ever increasing list of adventure racing kit. I’m just not sure how I’m going to tell my wife about my plans to get the bike. See All Event Posts
