IMW 2014

Met heather and ben at their camper in the dark. usual pre match tension. Heather and i walked down to transition in our wetsuits. Standard all nerves chit chat. Heather had forgotten her bottles for the bike and started flapping. Not ideal preparation. We phoned Ben who said he would come down with them. We waited and waited . I had to go and get my own mental preparation together. I felt bad about it. The swim was brutal and choppy, most of my peers went 15 to 20 mins slower. I went 2 mins slower than last year. This played into my hands with DJ an easterly swim suited me perfectly in our little battle. Not sure why i didnt slow as much maybe a split in the pack , a differnet line, all luck though. Got out felt ok and headed for the bike. Within a mile (before leaving tenby) my hydration plan for the bike had gone. coming down park street the top came off my aero handlebar bottle. I actually turned around and went to look for it much to the joy of the other cyclists hurtling around the craigs dairy corner. few choice words were exchanged. I gave up on it. I’ll have to rely on the feed stations now. It also meant i only had one bottle till angle. The concentrated bottle was now redundant with no aero bottle to pour it into . so i binned the remnants of the aero bottle and the concentrate. And carried on my merry way. Was in a bit of a world of my own for a bit and failed to notice catching slacky and Jim on the way to angle. Just ollie ahead . As i came down pembroke high street i thought i saw him and thought i cant b that close to him. It then dawned on me that there were more castelli speed suits in the world than just the ones nbcc had. The support on the bike was immense all the little villages were rammed. Going up lamphey hill Nick said i was in the top 50 . thought it was quiet. Plenty of time to screw that up i thought as ,once again i felt i was pushing too hard on the bike.Turned out i needed to. I was , for my ability, caning it. And as usual spent most of the bike saying to myself ‘you are fucking this up , you are going too hard on the bike’ I kept saying that but failed to act on it. By the start of lap 2 i started to catch people on their first lap. Was nice to have some company. Busy up heart break hill and now all i was thinking was ‘ where are the rest of them?’ Onto the run and coming out of t2 i stopped at a speaker and poured out some caffiene tablets and boshed 3 of them. At this point i drifted out of my own world and noticed the compere had stopped talked. I looked up and there he was on my speaker staring i me gobbling down unmarked white pills. I winked at him and said caffeine mate no need to get excited. He looked skeptical. i couldnt believe how few people were out on the run course. I turned at new hedges lap one and eyes straining all the way back for where DJ and rob were. DJ and i crossed at the top of narbeth road he was on the way out on lap one. Me heading back into town lap one. Its not enough i thought. 15/20 mins maybe. Lap 2 getting busier DJ had made the length of narbeth road on me. Rob was further behind and looked unhappy.(turns out there had been a lot of upset stomachs from swallowing sea water in the swim) Lap 3 i had taken back a few hundred meters on DJ. THen i started to believe . Just hold on one lap to go got to be my year got to be. The final lap was a blur running through town was amazing . As i went into the lanes i clocked a tenby aces top just behind me, i thought who the fuck is that. No , i’m too close to be beaten now. Not happening. The red carpet . 10.41 and 40 th place. Turns out the ‘aces’ man was richard gardener an aces member but not from pembs. He got announced as first pembs man home on the finishing chute . What can you do? First Pembs man home.( ollie didnt make the run) Fastest amateur pembs man time. 40th overall. fastest non pro welsh man in the event and second fastest welsh man overall. Beat a few pros and wasnt ‘chicked’ . And got my golden ticket . Qualified for KONA. Which means got to do all this shit again next year.

imw wales 2014 the locals