Swansea National Pool Triathlon

22nd July 2007

Report by Les Watson

Firstly let me apologise for, once again, boring you with one of my race reports but there were only three Pembs Tri at the event; Julian, Luke and myself so not much scope for a change in author particularly as we wouldn’t want Luke gloating over his victory and I haven’t seen Julian since the race.

Tuska was wet; Swansea was wetter! It started off not too bad as we went into the pool for the swim but, boy, didn’t it pelt when we emerged.

As usual I started relatively early in the field due to my naff swim time, Julian started half a dozen places behind me whilst Luke was last to enter the water. I had 4 or 5 overtake me on the swim (was one of these Julian?) but I didn’t have the same battle with the ‘head-up breaststroker’ that I’d had the year before. In fact I even overtook a couple, wow!

Out of the pool and into transition where it emerged the rain had started to fall - but not too bad so far. After a couple of km on the bike I’m pleased to say that I went past my big bruv who had entered his first tri. He was painfully grinding up the first incline (on Jake’s borrowed bike), ‘oh dear, he doesn’t know what’s yet to come’. Then the heavens really opened and it was ‘wall to wall’ water. We got wetter on the bike than in the pool. The blessing was no wind so at least the rain was vertical.

Climbing up onto the Gower gave a good insight into off-road biking as we forged our way up through raging torrents. Once on top it was quite fast and, having watched several come off in similar conditions in ‘Le Tour’ the day before, and realising that I was going at much the same speed (!!!), it seemed prudent to take care on some of the sharp turns and bends. No sign of Julian and Luke hadn’t gone past yet.

Back to the pool and out onto the 3-lap run. Big bruv came flying past on his bike as I was halfway round lap 1 then at the start of lap 2 on a short out and back loop the race leader went past (opposite direction) with Luke some 10-15secs behind. By the time they passed me Luke had taken the lead by 10secs and he managed to maintain this through the remaining two laps to take a very pleasing first victory. I came home in 31st place and Julian was not far behind in 49th. Amazingly we didn’t see each other at any point on the run until the finish line. Big bruv managed to wobble round in 75th place out of the 89 finishers.

Full results can be found at:

http://www.the-multisport.org/Results/SwanseaTriResult07.xls