Bristol Harbourside Triathlon Preparations

I’m racing again this weekend in the Sprint Distance Bristol Harbourside Triathlon.

This was the race that first got me interested in the whole Age-Group World Championship thing. I wanted to do a race in or around Bristol again this year so that Brad, Mike and possibly Jay could join in again, but having done the Wotton Triathlon for two years in a row we wanted to do a different one. We therefore signed up for the Bristol Harbourside Triathlon. As we did so, I noticed that it was a qualifier for the ITU Age-Group World Championships so looked into what that meant.

I quite liked the idea of possibly qualifying for Team GB so paid the money and registered to qualify. Then, rather than put all my eggs into one basket I signed up for the Big Cow triathlon as well which was another qualifying event. That meant I had two shots at qualifying this year, one at Big Cow and another at what I had expected to be the main race of the season in Bristol.

As it happened, I surprised myself with a very quick time in the Big Cow Triathlon back in May, managed to get the fastest qualifying time there and therefore no longer need to qualify in Bristol. I’m still going to do the race in Bristol, but it is no longer an ‘A’ priority race and will in effect just be a training session for me.

I’d still like to do well of course and I’d quite like to put in a time that would have been a qualifying time, just to prove that my time at Big Cow wasn’t a one-off.

Training has been going well, but I haven’t been preparing for a race. Within my periodised training plan I’m back to Base Level training at the moment so have done no speed work and won’t really be tapering for the race either. I’m not feeling very fast at the moment and that hasn’t been helped by the fact that Anna’s Mum has been her for 10 days, baking cakes and pies all the time – It would be rude not to eat them now wouldn’t it!

So, those are my excuses for the weekend so far…

• It’s just a training day not a race
• I haven’t done any race preparation or speed work, just base level training
• I’m too fat

No doubt I’ll add to the list in the next few days and will have some sort of major disaster on Saturday – That’s what normally happens anyway. I do of course have to make sure I beat Brad and Mike who are also racing on Sunday. They are much younger than me, but that’s just an added incentive to beat them!

In some respects its a shame I’m not likely to be performing at my peak for this race as it should be a fast course and I reckon I could get myself closer to the hour mark on it, but not this weekend.

Good luck to all the other competitors, lets hope it all goes well and that the weather is on our side too.

Tags: BristolTriathlon