Eastnor Middle, Sunday 1st July 2007

Report by Rob Harper

Eastnor was my first middle distance tri, and there was much to be learnt. Such as how the hell do you get on a bike with behind-the-saddle water bottles? Going into the race the main concern was the weather, which, as I'm sure you all know, was pretty terrible. On race day though it wasn't too bad, couple of heavy showers on the bike but otherwise fine.

The swim was just 1500m - excellent, the shorter the swim the better as far as I'm concerned. Quite picturesque in the lake overlooked by the castle. Otherwise not much to say really - I swam around the lake two and a half times quite slowly and with poor technique then got out. T1 was quite, quite terrible with much faffing with arm warmers etc. But surely a minute or two here wouldn't make much difference overall would it? (Or would it?)

The bike was the main event really, 54 miles in 4 laps, each lap having a big climb with 200m ascent up to British Camp. This was a bit of a beast, gradually steepening until their were no more gears left and there was nothing left to do but get out of the saddle and crank. At the start of the lap there was also a more manageable climb, but the rest of the course was quite fast with some long descents. So overall it was a mix of labouring up the climbs then spinning out at 40mph+ on the descents. I was a happy chappy reaching the top of the big climb for the fourth and final time, knowing that most of the hard work was over - on the bike at least. 4500ft of climbing in total on the bike - ouch.

T2 saw me commit a schoolboy error when I forgot to pick up my gels for the run - doh! The 12 mile run started with a steady uphill - great, just what we all needed. Saw Carl for the first time here, he must have been just ahead of me on the bike all the way around. The run was two laps of a three-pronged out and back course - if that makes any sense - mostly flat apart from a cruel descent then steep climb to cross a valley. One side of this was steep enough to have me walking and I'm not ashamed to admit it (OK, maybe slightly ashamed!). It took about 25 minutes for my legs to really switch on but thereafter I found an OK rhythm. The worst bit of the run was the third prong which was on a rough muddy surface and dark and gloomy in the trees. Actually that wasn't the worst bit. The worst bit was meeting a guy coming the other way asking me if I was on my 2nd lap - I wasn't but I assumed he was, which meant he must have fully 40 minutes on me (this was the eventual winner)! A chunk of banana substituted for my missing gels but I didn't really feel hungry anyway.

Eventually I was heading back to the end of the second lap then a downhill yomp on grass to the finish - hooray! Two guys were in sight ahead but alas just too far ahead to stand any chance of catching. So I finished in 7th place, happy with that. Carl also had a strong race finishing in 11th. The overall winner Joel Jameson was a class above the rest of the field taking 27 minutes out of 2nd place (he also smashed up the field at the Big Cow middle the weekend after...). But from 3rd place to me in 7th was only 3 minutes - the kind of margin that leaves you thinking "what if...". Anyway it was a good race and I enjoyed it - I think!

Results (1500m/54mi/12mi)

Pos	Name	Time	Swim	SwimPos	Cycle	CyclePos	Run	RunPos
1	Joel Jameson	04:08:49	00:24:57	2	02:33:35	2	01:10:16	1
7	Rob Harper	04:49:28	00:34:15	37	02:56:56	7	01:18:16	4
11	Carl Parker	05:04:10	00:31:16	20	02:59:35	9	01:33:18	25

Back to main results page