I was pretty pleased with the time, 5 hours 08 minutes and 35 seconds, with the following splits:

The swim started bright and early at 6:20am, so I was up and out of the B&B, with Rich from GyroHSR who was also racing, at 5am. We arrived and got transition sorted, I rushed a bit by faffing far too much, but all went relatively smoothly.

Rutland Water, home of the Vitruvian Triathlon

The water was full of plant life which was a bit annoying to say the least, tangling around my arms a few times but after 2 laps of the 950m course, I emerged feeling quite good. So much so I probably could have taken another minute off the swim time, but it was also a rough swim, with other competitors around me all the way.  I took my time a bit in transition, getting the wetsuit off and making sure I had all the gels and bars I needed and set off on the 2 lap 42.5km course.

It was cold, very cold and a bit too windy on the bike, but the hills got my heart going when they came around. I aimed at keeping my heart rate at 140BPM on the bike, gauging that would be the level I thought I would need to post a sub 3 hours time, turns out it was a great time, as I got through the hills and the wind still feeling strong for the part I had trained most for recently, the half marathon.

Feeling pretty  strong I set the target heart rate of 157 all the way, which should post a 1:35 half marathon, not bad at all. However I expected to flag and while I felt strong most of the way round, the faster runners were a little demoralising.  I kept above 155BPM most of the way round, in the last 7km easing off a little and cruising home at 145BPM, with an average HR of 154BPM for the 21km. I even had a little in the tank for a 50m  sprint at the end!

Only down side to the day was finding Rich at the end, and hearing his race wasn’t ideal – I wish he’d felt as strong so we had a fair comparison of times. Still, I had quite a bit of time on him and better training in the build up may just have given me a sub 5 hour time, but that’s life!

And the day after,  following that monster challenge, I had my Choi Kwang Do yellow belt grading, so now I’m a Vitruvian and a a proper colour belt in martial arts. All in all a good weekend!

I have to admit, I’m pretty happy with that – despite getting a bit lost and disoriented on the swim, I made it round in closer to my original goal of 2hr 15 than my revised goal of 2hr 30. Full results are available on the Big Cow website. The winner, Adam Bowden, managed a pretty amazing 1hr 48min time.

To say I’ve also run my fastest ever 10km after an undulating bike ride also says quite a bit for the training from Jen at Optimum Velocity which has really pulled me back from running oblivion!

Then of course this morning I thought what better way to recover than a 5km run and a coached swim session. That was painful!

Completing a warm up sprint distance triathlon on Wednesday gone in the F3 Traithletes World series, at Dorney Lake, was a bit of a milestone in the end. Posting not only my fastest swim yet, I also managed a pretty good 21:32 5km run off the bike.  A total time of 1:14.58 met my final goal of last year and hitting under 1:15 for a sprint triathlon really felt like an achievement. Now lets see if 1:10 is possible next year!

Milton Keynes have slightly annoyed me by changing the bike route to a 2 lap 20km route rather than one 40km loop, however I hope to use this to my advantage and blitz the second lap by know where I can punch it and when I need to save some leg strength for the undulations. Travelling up there by car Saturday means I’ll also have chance to recce the course, better preparing myself even more.

I’ve also just started my own running club! Work have introduced a scheme to try and get people more active and I’ll be taking on the running side of it with regular runs for all abilities at various times throughout the week. Will have to plan the best way for beginner and mixed ability running sessions, but I also look forward to the faster lot providing a bit of a challenge and motivation during some really tough interval and fartlek sessions.

The GyroHSR Chicago office have also laid down challenge in regards to a Nike+ inter-office challange, so I’ll have to get myself an iPod and Nike+ sports kit to participate in that – but to be honest its a good excuse for more training tracking toys.

Thankfully this week I have completed a 6km and 7.5km run with absolutely no ill effects whatsoever, in fact my legs felt stronger than they ever have following any distance running. Tomorrow I am tempted to even try the 11.4km run into work (SW20 to SW10), however it might be a bit soon for an undulating run like that.

I’m attributing this feeling to 2 things, the excellent physiotherapy (and subsequent stretching exercises) that David Bolton provided and Choi Kwang Do study and stretching. Now I included a Choi Kwang Do warm up before my running and with class twice a week I hope that the injuries will stay away – goodness knows I’ve had a shocking time with injuries so far this year.

The Pyrenees are beautiful and while we knew we were in for a tough time with a few big hills, no one really expected to be staying at the bottom of a hors catégorie climb in Col du Tourmalet. Round the corner was the Col d’Aspin too which has featuredin Le Tour de France 66 times. So the climbing was awesome, tough, beautiful, painful, challenging, sweaty and required a lot of determination.

Climbing the Col du Tourmalet as soon as we got there on Saturday morning was difficult enough. Of course the next day, the riding an undulating 70km (via Lourdes and Bagneres de Bigorre) and climb the other side from the West to on Sunday was unbelievably tough.

On Monday we managed to fit 2 Cols into out ride, by riding a nice small road Col near Heches, then up the Col d’Aspin from the East. It was in between these two Cols that we discovered Richard G didn’t actually have the compact chainset that he asked for on his Specalized Roubaix S-Works. Which provided amusement, expect for the fact it just showed his strength while he beat me up most hills, or mountains!!

Tuesday was the last day so it was a straight sprint up Col d’Aspin from the West and back down again to pack up and head home.

What a fantastic few days it was and I absolutely want to do this again, only next time I want to take those hills by the scuff of the neck and keep up with the rest of the boys, if not bethe first up! Although as I was riding with 2 Ironmen, this might be more difficult  than it seems.

The season didn’t get off the the best start, when I forgot to register and then tried to start but wasn’t allowed. Thankfully I woke up – I was only having a bad dream! Next dream was even worse when I forgot to rack my bike and had to get it out of the car once I had finished the swim. I’m a little worried that dreaming about triathlon means I might be taking this a little too seriously.

When I finally finished dreaming about triathlon I woke bright and early at 5am to load the car and get over in good time, parking easily and being all registered by 5:45am. This being my first Thames Turbo, I had no idea I would be standing around for 2 hours until all 483 competitors before me got started at 15 seconds intervals.

Eventually starting, I got the swim out of the way in a respectable 8:30 minutes, then I went out on the bike. The TT bike just didn’t feel fast. I couldn’t seem to get the pace up to what I wanted, the roads were horrible, but I got through and started on the run. I was passed by Louie of the Viceroys about half way round the bike course so that was my motivation on the run, get back in front and hold it to the end, which happened approximately 4km into the run.

After finishing in 1:14 I decided that I need to do Thames Turbo Race 2 on 4th May to find out what time I can get with proper preparation – not to mention a decent bike leg. So 5am starts for a bike and a swim it is I guess, because I’m determined to finally finish first out of all the people I know, if it kills me. Which is a distinct possibility.