PARC BRYN BACH TRIATHLON

29th July 2007

Report by Mervyn Williams

5 take to the hills of Tredegar or Multi Lap Mayhem choose appropriate title!!

Ok first things first, the sun was shining, which last happened in a triathlon at Brecon in 1998 apparently, maybe sooner but my memory isn’t what it used to be. So this was a first for most of us a multi-lap closed bike course and indeed a fairly new triathlon venue in Wales.

Ok, so it was sunny, but this being summer 2007 the rain had only stopped about 4 hours before race start, so the technical downhill parts of the bike course would have been better tackled on a mountain bike.  The bike course can only be described as technical, lots of slow, often wet, corners and the accelerations back up the hills.  Interesting.

First things first and the swim was a two-lap lake affair, which having got myself pumped up with a can of Red Bull I managed to lead all the way round coming out with the eventual 1st and 2nd place overall athletes in just over 21 mins – I’m sure they couldn’t have had such a good race if they hadn’t drafted me in the swim!!

Post transition I was down to 3rd and stayed there until lap 7 of 10 for the bike when Neil Jones from the Rhondda decided to have a little duel.  He came off the bike about 30 secs up and Dave was about 10 secs back. Off on to the 3 lap 10k run the 3 of us were close together at about 2k in, I redlined it for about 2k staying on Dave’s heels enough to put a gap between myself and Neil and so safe in 4th spot, which is how it stayed until the finish, Dave probably taking another minute from me. 

So there we were Dave 3rd and me 4th, so I was surprised to hear 5th place being called out when I crossed the line.  So the intrigue starts...

OK, multi lap courses – kids do them all the time, and the message is always count your own laps.  However you have to have a system in place that ensures that the right number is done. Given that we were fitted with champion chips this would be easy, just put a counter on each lap, any disputes you know exactly how many laps a person has done.  Unfortunately, marshals doing their best were relied on.  The bike laps were taking about 6.5 mins, so from a time perspective its not obvious if someone is short of laps.  However when the people in 3rd, 4th and 5th know what their position is the only way someone can end up jumping 15 places to finish 3rd and take the silverware is to do one lap short.  The lap counters, our only back up, confirmed he had done 10 laps, yeah and I met the pope on my last lap!

This took the shine off the race a bit, because it was a good race, pity the guy, who I think genuinely thought he had done 10 laps, couldn’t see the logic we put to him and confess that he might have got it wrong.

It didn’t affect me directly, I was still 1st Veteran, but Dave lost his trophy for 3rd place.

Ellie was a victim of the lap counting doing a lap too many and called it a day before the run, having been well placed, probably second, at the time.

Darren Evans’ usual prediction of death on the bike course, or a at least serious injury proved unfounded and he finished unscathed, just behind Lee Wells who had a strong race, just pipping Darren on the run I believe. 

Overall good race and a welcome addition to the Welsh Calendar – just use the technology to help with lap counting and it would be perfect!!

For full results, please click here.