Just under a month post the race now, so a later post as I’ve been preparing for and taking my GCSE’s starting last week, but after the autumn/winter triathlon off-season I was back racing at the Super Series PA’s for another year to kick off the start of tri.
Race format: Not in traditional triathlon format, I was racing swim-bike-run over two days: A 400m swim TT in the pool on the Saturday, followed by a 10km bike/ 2.5km run on the Sunday. How the bike/run works: We started as if I had just come out the swim (so ready to go into T1). The quickest swimmer from the day before starts and then athletes start in the time deficit they are from that lead swim time yesterday i.e. if the quickest time is 04:10 for 400m and you swim 04:40, you start 30 seconds after the swim lead goes off for the bike/run.
Saturday: 400m Swim TT
Travelling up to Nottingham for a 3 o’clock (pm) start, I arrived with 45mins or so to warm up and register, after having to leave later. I swam 4.58 for 400m which put me a bit back in the general times of everyone. I swam 14s quicker than last year but I know my swim is my weakest discipline and I’m working on it, so it meant a bit more catch up the next day.
Being around 15s back off around the front pack’s swim time, for the bike, meant it would be harder to get in the best group for Sunday and wasn’t ideal but I couldn’t change the swim time so had to just give everything over the course of the bike/run with the position I was in.
My OW (open water) swim has been a bit better than my pool swimming, and was generally last year, with the PA’s being the only race in the Super Series with a pool swim and everything else being OW.
Sunday: Bike/run
Despite being a later swim category on Saturday my race (Youth A/B) was the first of the day. The bike and run are flat and the course isn’t technical, since the race is upon an aerodrome and the bike and run are both just 2 laps with 2 dead turns.
I had a clean T1 and was straight into my shoes on my bike, after the mount line, getting the power down quickly to get in as high up as group as possible. After a couple minutes, bike groups started to stay as they were with my group just being off the main, front pack and with no one in my group working we were with little chance of catching the front.
After the 2 bike laps were coming to an end and it was time to head into T2 before the run, I got my way up to the front to try and be in best position for transition and near to the front for the run.
Unfortunately I had been having some trouble getting into my smallest gear on the bike as it had been jumping around but I managed to not lose too much time or at least gained it back and came off the bike towards the front ready for a good T2.
I was determined to have a strong run, and made my way through as many people as possible, having the 2nd quickest run of the day, and finishing 9th Youth A and 21st Overall (Youth A/B combined), catching a couple more places at the line to break into the top 10.
This was my first race on my new Edco 4.8 wheelset, looking great on my Moda Finale (top image). The difference with a set of carbon wheels (compared to standard aluminium wheels) was definitely noticeable and they are very light too, coming in at 1510g.
I’m looking forward to the rest of the season and at time of writing had a pretty good race at Super Series Rd.2 in Llanelli.
A post on my most recent Super Series race at Llanelli should hopefully be on the site next week, so stay tuned or come back to read how I got on. Thanks for reading 😉
My Triathlon Journey 
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