Tour of Pembs 2014
Triathlon Training Blog, Monday, April 28th, 2014Up at 5 am yes , love those early starts. Drove up from the camp to st davids. Found James skulking in the car park in his Hot rod fully pimped out black t5 with alloy wheels. Went to register …in the rain, blown sideways. Gonna be a long day me thinks. We get our shit together and head for the start line.730 , lot of very serious people with very serious hardware. James and my bikes wouldn’t get 500 quid for the pair on ebay.
James and i go through the same charade every time we do this.Take it easy for the first 20 then build the pace through to 70 then give it everything and hang on. And, true to form James is out of the blocks like bolt on speed. I go with it. We catch onto a group that are rinsing so much power on the hills there’s no way they can sustain it. Luckily one of them completely fluffs a gear change and has to stop. They must’ve known they were pushing their limits as we never saw them again.
Then we get in a tussle with, lets call him ‘big red’ . On a 4 k bike , deep v carbon rims. Now big red is going to blow after 60 the way he is going or make the podium. We hold onto him for a spell . We pass Escobar and Tom then mercifully James has yet another puncture. I decide to wait.For a whole host of reasons.The main one being 40 miles in i need a rest.
We chase down big red for the next 10 miles having lost 9 mins on him . No cigar. We didn’t see him again till 80 miles.
We get to the poppit sands check point and i look and see we have only done 45 miles i feel flogged and nearly all this leg has been with the wind. We have taken a lot of stupid risks on the descents.Coming into newport i must’ve gone through 3 or 4 sets of brake blocks the wind was storm force side ways. It was dangerous. We leave poppit mildly refreshed having finally taken a top off. I was cooking.
The feeling refreshed bit didn’t last and i’m back to the feeling of impending doom . I think we have overcooked this .The miles crawl by. Not even half way. We climbed over one of the preselis and coming over the top was horrendous.The descent was harder than the climb. The wind was mental
By this time i had been chucking gels down my neck like smarties. I kinda then had a sinking feeling when i realised i’d done 2 packets of caffeine gels. I could feel my self going into caffeine narcosis. I’m fucked. I felt like shit. Race over. Only one thing to do in situations like these. I boshed a whole pack of normal gels and a whole load of fluid. Toughed it out and 15mins later i’m feeling good. So good i decide its time to practice pissing on the bike. now i dont know if there are any hard or fast rules associated with this passtime. but i just sit there and basically piss myself and watch it run down my leg and come to rest in my shoe. normal? james didn’t think so.he didn’t like it one bit in fact he was most put out. ok maybe i shouldn’t have done it while on the front and splashed him. some people are so picky.its better than stopping. We got to boncath feed station and had to stop to take on more water, for our piss yourself competition. Which only i was playing.
After drinking just isotonic stuff i felt better again. We gunned the last 30 miles .(ended up having the fastest split for the final leg) James was hanging on and suffering a bit now and i rode away from him a couple of times and dropped back. Then in the last 10 the elastic snapped and i had to chase down another 100 miler and James drifted off the back.
Now this guy did my head in. He drafted me then attacked but wasn’t strong enough to stay away . I’d catch him back. This went on for 10 miles then i dropped in on the last 2 miles. WHich were really bad. Soaked now,cold had had enough.Nice to see some friendly faces in the cathedral grounds then up the hill to the finish.
Got a bit excited then and after 108 miles in the wind and rain decided to do an ‘easy run ‘ off the bike. While in the carpark changing into my shoes paul came over to say hello. while i was chatting i decided to practice pissing myself while talking to a relative stranger in my running gear. I didn’t need to do it as the toilets were maybe 5 metres away. Well , Paul must have noticed , he didn’t bat an eye and carried on. Makes me wonder what company he normally keeps. My 15 min run deteriorated quickly into an 8 min crawl. Bit ambitious . Still did 1.2 miles in those 8 mins. Back to the van to change my now piss soaked runners.
Third over all,James 4th. Tough day and happy with that. We had a coffee etc with fabulous and rob collins who were there having a watch.
James was a bit gutted and i went to see him back in the carpark. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake. As i slide open the side door of the t5 i was confronted by a forlorn James shaw sprawled out in his pants eating a pepperami. Its an image which will take a long time to forget.
there were a few crashes and big red had had a mechanical or something as he came in a spell after us. Good day at the races all told.
