Cosmeston Triathlon 10th June

Report by Darren Evans

There are only three things that can get a man out of bed before 3am:

i. Travelling to an airport

ii Crying babies

iii Triathlon

Since a holiday during racing season is a hanging offence and having, thus far, safely navigated the ice-bergs in life’s ocean that are babies, it was the trip down the M4 to the dark side of Penarth (and it certainly was dark at that time of day!) that got me up at that unthinkable hour (illustrated by the longest conversation I have ever had with the girl next door as she was walking by on her way home just as I was about to leave!)

The M4 at that time of day is a place of foreign lorries and limos. It is also thankfully quite short! After a brief detour somewhere into the heart of Barry I got to Cosmeston and went to register (failing not to hear the various conversations starting with the words “I had to get up at 5 this morning…”).

Dave Moore and Oggy were the only two others from the club there and after a joke with DM that I’m sure neither of us was too comfortable with (regarding the Lucky Dip of 20 types of bacteria we were promised in the lake) we waded in and lined ourselves up for the start. This was the first race were I didn’t lose a tooth at the start and this good fortune continued (since I don’t appear to have caught anything nasty!) right into transition. The race brief stated, in bold print, No Cycling in Transition and if it weren’t for the foot high grass that meant I had to actually carry my bike from the racking I might have forgotten. The cycle course was an undulating 20k out and back affair which presented few problems (no sneaky Newgale Hills anywhere) and after returning to transition it was out onto a nice flat run around the lake (which I desperately hope was more than 5k. If not, I’m in for some serious pain at Pembrokeshire in a few weeks…).

I’ve raced a few Cardiff Tri Club races in recent years and I’ve always found them to be very well run and marshalled, and this was no exception. The un-Godly hour aside, I would even go as far as to recommend this race to people. The run was nice and scenic (so I’m told!) and the army of swans on the lake decided that, on this occasion, we would be allowed to live. This time…

Position	Name	Swim	Bike	Run	Total
2	Oggy	11:04	32:56	20:36	1:04:36
13	Dazza	12:10	36:51	22:14	1:11:15
57	Dave Moore	18:33	45:31	23:03	1:27:07