Matt Ellis and I decided to do Fritton standard distance tri on Sunday 17th June in preparation for the upcoming multi-sport World Championships during July.

The 1500m swim, 39km bike and 10km run would be ideal to get back in the swing of swim tethering, checking our positions on the tandem and doing a bit of running together. At the championships in Denmar we will have double the swim distance, 3 times the bike distance and 3 times the run distance to cover, so I want to be as prepared as possible!

We had a decent swim, although on the multi-lap loop it did get a bit congested at times, with Matt having to try and negotiate a path around people. He was apparently getting annoyed at some bloke constantly knocking into his leg…turns out it was me!

Lesson learned: It is much harder using the longer swim tether during a busy swim.

Out on the bike I felt decent, but early on we were held up by some cars stuck behind slower moving cyclists. Nothing you can do about that. Once into our stride we were moving well and hitting some good speeds. We got just under the hour and one of the fastest bike splits of the day which is OK considering.

Lesson learned: My bike position isn’t comfortable enough for 75 miles followed by a long run in Denmark!

I haven’t been running especially well lately, but I actually felt OK at this race. It was a very challenging run for a VI athlete, with twists and turns and almost all off road. There were even some single track sections with changing light conditions and ‘roots, roots and more roots’ to avoid, ably pointed out by Matt on each of the 3 laps.

Distortation caused by ocular migraine

I had an issue on lap 2 when I temporarily lost most of the vision in my right eye. This has happened once or twice before but not during competition. It is probably a ‘visual/occular migraine‘ and starts with a little visual distortion/flashing which gets progressively worse. It gradually moves through the visual field and dissipates after anything from just a few minutes to 30 minutes. It’s not nice and for me it wasn’t helpful since it was affecting my stronger eye, but ultimately this issue is deemed harmless in most people. It may have been triggered by tiredness, the changing light conditions or due to having had a whole range of eye tests completed just a few days earlier…who knows.

Thankfully by lap 3 things were more or less back to normal and I could get on with running again. 45 minutes wasn’t too bad for that course considering I walked for a few minutes on lap 2.

Lesson learned: I’m probably not running as badly as I think and it’s a good idea to have a guide you trust just in case something unexpected happens:-)

I believe we finished 10th in 2 hours 15 minutes, but regardless it was great training and give us a few things to think about before Denmark.

Thanks to Matt, who did a sterling job throughout and especially when I couldn’t see much. Cheers buddy!

Also well done to the other members of Beacon tri who got some great results over the weekend’s three races and to those who also volunteered, including Jill who was manning the dismount line and got a cheer at the end for her enthusiastic approach to this role!.  A few photo’s from the weekend are below taken by members of Beacon tri: –

Iain