Inverclyde Sprint Tri 2016

Post date: Aug 30, 2016 9:37:36 PM

By Dom Sharkey

So I noticed the Inverclyde Tri on entrycentral on its closing date, and as luck would have it I knew I would already be driving from Saltcoats to Campbeltown that day anyway, and it wasn’t too much of a detour to throw in a quick race enroute! Hosted by the Gourock Outdoor pool, the swim was 800m followed by a 15km flat fast bike and a (supposedly) 5k run.

It was a bit of a disappointing day weather-wise from the events point of view - dull, drizzly and quite cold, but for competing was much preferable to a scorching sunny day.

Strangely the Gourock pool is a salt-water, 33.3m pool, both of which made for a slightly different sort of swim, but in a way really enjoyable as it meant only doing 24 lengths rather than 32! After ongoing goggle leakage issues that have been doing my head in for weeks, I made the controversial decision to go goggles under cap for once – and now I’m sold – had probably my best swim in a race, coming out the pool in about 10th place or so.

The bike saw me catch everyone ahead of me before the half-way point– but also getting caught by someone from behind – which was my first time being overtaken on the bike in a triathlon. Swallowing my pride, I decided to keep out of the red and let him go, keeping him just in sight for the start of the run.

Hitting the run I felt in good shape, and caught and passed the leader after about 500m. From here it was just a solo time trial effort to keep the pace high, knowing there was some very good runners behind. The 5k run turned out to be more like 4.5k, which I was hugely grateful for as I was dieing by this point. Crossed the line in 1st place but had a nervous wait to make sure there was no one who’d started the swim 30s behind me and actually completed it in a faster time. Ended up winining overall by 9 seconds in a time of 54:30. Interestingly this exact route was my first ever triathlon in 2013 – in a time of 1:05:34. So it’s good to know training does actually work.