Standard Distance Triathlon:British Championships, Sunderland

Written by John Pratt

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This race was also a 2024 Age Group World Championship qualifying race and the second of my two “A” races in 2023. It’s been about 10 months in the making. I’ve been doing a lot of learning this season about triathlon training processes and part of that has been funded by HPH Triathlon to complete a BTF Level 2 coaching course. I’m intending to write about this season’s project of “self coaching” and the impact it’s had on me both in Triathlon and life in general, at some point in the future. 

After last season’s emotional rollercoaster of initially thinking I’d missed out on Age Group qualification to then receiving a roll-down allocation of a GB place months and months later at the 11th hour and then not being able to find the resources in time to race. It was time to look at how I could do better. That’s the process I would like to cover some other time. But, I’ll say it’s been a fantastic thing to have done and much more value to me than simply athletic improvement. For now, I’ve decided to write about the race. This is for catharsis and to help me get my head around the race and its permutations as well as colouring in any of the half arsed explanations I may have given in person to anyone who’d listen!

In the middle of July I’d raced my first of this season’s “A” races at Woodhorn Museum Sprint, a further 30 mins up the coast from Sunderland. That was a 2024 European Sprint championship qualifier. I didn’t make the top 4, which are the automatic qualification places for the GB Age Group team but there are 20 squad places available. So my realistic target is always to get a time as close as I can to the winning time in my age category, Category H (O40-44). There are other avenues of qualification via World and European success but remaining squad places are allocated via a “roll down” based on how close an athlete finished to the winner in their age category. So my time at Woodhorn of 1:20:14 was 102.87% of the winning time in my Age Cat. Nothing confirmed as yet. In fact at the time of writing, the location of the 2024 European Sprint Championship has yet to be confirmed! But it’s a cracking result and I’m very hopeful of a positive outcome.

Roll on a few weeks and my start time for The British Championships in Sunderland was 07:10 on Sunday morning. Registration time was 05:50 so it wasn’t really viable to drive up on the morning of race day. Accommodation near to the venue was all but gone and what remained was at an eye watering premium. So, I took a room at a classic motorway Travelodge which was about 20 minutes drive from the “athlete carpark” I’d pre-booked.

 

The journey up on Saturday was a breeze. I had TMS on the radio listening to what has turned out to be one of the classic ashes series. The roads were clear enough. I had the foresight to pick up a load of food for lunch, tea and snacks as well as a couple of porridge pots for race day morning. This was a great call as there were no food options at the hotel and a choice of WH Smith, Costa and Burger King at the services. I had a little hotel room picnic and a bath. (I do not own a bath so this was a real treat) Stuart Broad had just announced his retirement from Cricket so I even got a bit of extra TMS as they stayed broadcasting a bit longer to begin the eulogy of a great sporting career. More TMS is fine by me. Lovely stuff.

Race day. Wake up at 04:30 after a pretty good night’s sleep. I sometimes struggle with sleep pre-race and when i’m not in my own bed so it was pretty good to get some solid hours in. Smashed down the porridge pots, a couple of coffees (I’d also taken my aero press and some decent coffee up) and checked out. I’d brought my bike into the room as the carpark wasn’t secure so had to load that back in the car and off I went all perfectly on plan to the “Athlete carpark”

I always plan race day timings from race start back through transition, registration, park up, set off, load up, etc.. and then add wiggle room. I’m always happier twiddling my thumbs for an hour than rushing to get my wetsuit on. I arrived at the car park and the lad on the gate said I needed to use “the other” carpark. He couldn’t give me directions and annoyingly there was no signposting either. I felt it went over his head that there might be people who weren’t versed in local knowledge attending the race but also maybe it’s not his fault. If he’s not being told how to direct people. I’m guessing he was a volunteer so I feel bad getting too annoyed with him specifically. I got lucky really, the people behind me were local and told me to follow them.

No signposts either from the “Athlete carpark” to the “Athlete village” which included registration.  Fortunately there was a steady stream of athletes to follow as the little image on the athlete guide .pdf wasn’t the most coherent map I’ve ever used! The “Athlete Village” turned out to be a grandiose name given to some tents at the side of a main road. It was an open access space with the general public, dogs, pushchairs etc… all over the place. Annoyingly there was no racking for bikes so I (along with all the other athletes) had to find a bin/wall/tree to lean my bike on whilst I put all my race numbers on etc… With it being an open space I couldn’t leave my bike anywhere safe to nip to a portaloo but I expected there would be some in transition, not much of a problem.

Then to transition. The route down was a series of narrow pathways around and through a housing estate. Even at that time in the morning there were athletes plus family and friends all trying to use a very small bit of pathway. Progress was slow. Taking another 15 minutes including the queue to get into transition to cover what should have been a 5 min walk. Once into transition, I was getting short on time. Usually I like to find the swim in, bike out, bike in and run out points. Then walk through T1 and T2 routes. I’ll often use a sharpie on the back of my hands to note how many racks I run past and if I’m racked on my left or right but decided by that point the toilet was the most important thing. 5 portaloos was taking the usual “too few portaloos” to quite an extreme and I was quickly vindicated in prioritising getting in the loo-queue as the queue was growing at an almost exponential rate. Ironically, I’m informed as I’m at the front of the queue that there were further toilets on the beach at swim start. 

Back to my stuff to finish setting up and it’s quarter to 7. I’m not on my own finding the logistics on the day have eaten away all that extra time. A few guys around me rushed to get themselves sorted.  The positive is that there was no time to overthink what’s about to happen in a race that I’ve spent the past ten months with my eyes on. In hindsight I think it’s around this time that I hit what I’ve heard people describe maybe as “flow”. I was just in the moment. My decision making was so clear and emotions became dialled right down. There was no time to lube up either myself or my shoes. I said to myself “that’s fine, you can deal with the consequences afterwards”.  It was more important that my wetsuit was on. I was  zipping up after being called to the wave start. It turns out those toilets at swim start weren’t much use as there would be no time to use them before the swim brief starts. The course had been changed from what was in the athlete guide. I can’t remember If we were told why. Basically yellow buoys on our right side. Red ones on the left. 

We’re told “it’s quite cold” and “people were struggling yesterday and it’s a bit cooler today”… We were given 2 mins to “acclimatise”. I’m straight in. Yes! Yes sir, yes indeed it IS very cold. I’m later told it was around 13.7°C. A big scoop of the north sea into the wetsuit and I’m doing as many sink downs to try and fast track my nervous system into accepting that all this is fine and normal. Like I said. This weird state of mind I hit meant I had no thoughts of how hard or miserable those water temperatures are. I just thought “OK, I know what cold water is like and I need to concentrate on maximising acclimatisation”

Then we’re called back to the start line, the hooter goes, and we’re off into the sea. I realise in hindsight that this state of flow manifests largely as me talking to myself; A LOT! I think it’s internal but I couldn’t be sure to tell you the truth. The other interesting thing about this internal coach/cheerleader/directeur sportif I found is that it kept me 100% in the moment. No intrusive  thoughts of what if, no self doubt and no overconfidence. Just a peace in “what is” and that performing  the best I can is the only tangible objective. So, owing to bits of swell and current, we are chucked around a bit by the sea. Plus the usual contact with each other at the start and around the buoys as we all find a pair of feet or a hip to draft ensues. I found something near a rhythm eventually and every time I found myself fighting the sea a bit I reminded myself to “relax and go faster”. I’ve noticed that the more challenging the swim conditions the more it seems to work in my favour in a race and I think it’s fair to say that I fared a bit better on the day than many swimmers who would absolutely destroy me in a pool or better conditions.

Eventually I see the sea bed coming closer and reminding myself to keep swimming until my hands touch the sand before standing. I’m running up the beach and a guy was shouting  “you dropped your watch”!!! I’d accidentally broken the strap as I was taking the top half of my wetsuit off! I thanked him and just looked at it in my hand and was like well I can’t use it now and knew immediately that the time taken to work out if I could fix it wasn’t worth it. Left it in transition and headed out on the bike. What a lovely guy by the way.

A nice little mount, feet in the shoes, shoes closed all before I turn left up a short sharp hill. I like the bike leg. I’m certainly not the best cyclist out there but compared to the swim and to a lesser extent the run it’s still my strongest discipline. I’ve upgraded my bike this year and although it might not be the pure bred TT bike which, given the option, most people would go for for a non draft triathlon it’s a huge upgrade on what I was on last season and an utter joy to ride! (Yes, she does have a name. Lucy, after Lucy C-B who also rides a Cube bike) The beauty of a road bike compared to a TT bike is how it rides up hills and how great they are on technical sections. So that was how I attacked the 4 lap 36.8km bike course. My race technically could have been over in the 1st KM. The road surfaces on large sections of the course were horrendous and on the first patch I hit I lost my water, the biddon bouncing right out of the holder. This is technically littering and a penalty in triathlon as I declined to stop and go back for it. I did look for it on the following lap but I couldn’t see it amongst all the other bottles and broken plastic/carbon fibre/fibreglass. If any technical officials are reading this… maybe I didn’t litter after all and it simply evaporated? However, I guess the officials decided it wasn’t worth DQing so many athletes who had seemingly had the same problem. Obviously I didn’t know that at the time and just took a calculated risk. My inner “director sportif” told me “OK well you know there is water on the run, it’s gone now get your head down”. I still had my gel taped to my top tube though. Even though I had no watch, I had my bike computer. So that took the focus away from counting laps somewhat as I could check distance on it. Also strangely my power metre connected. It’s never woken up when I’ve come out of transition before, so that was a nice surprise. Inconsequential but nice all the same!

Of course, a few incredible athletes did come past me during the bike leg but nothing to be alarmed about. These are some of the best non-elite Triathletes in GB afterall. The flip side of having such a narrow technical route as well as poor surfaces in places was how challenging it became on laps three and certainly four. With more and more athletes joining the course and a mixed ability of bike handling as well as some who weren’t following the notes in the athlete guide requesting athletes to ride on the left unless overtaking. There was also a note asking people not to use breaking zones of dead turns as overtaking spots. I can’t really say that everyone had read or remembered those notes and although I found working my way around people genuinely great fun, it was also an accident waiting to happen. One spot on the course I really enjoyed was coming down through the park and I got lucky that I never hit traffic through there. I saw two people getting loaded into ambulances though. One where the road surfaces were bad and one by one of the dead turns. Really not nice at all. In hindsight the route just felt too small for the number of athletes on it. I also realised how much I talk to myself on the bike! I’m coming up to corners instructing myself to wait on the brakes. Every corner exit I’m encouraging myself to push. When someone comes flying past I remind myself that it’s ok and unless I can catch them then it’s a pointless pursuit. There was one part of the course where it wasn’t much of an incline but it was enough to feel the elevation a little and a bit of a drag. A great place to make some time on people really. I was just like “Look, I know it hurts but you know this feeling, you’re friends with it and this is what you’re good at”. I might not have been able to hang with the big dogs on the flat sections but I felt every hill I was really solid. After just over an hour I’m peeling into T2. A lovely little transition, no dramas.

Then onto the run. 10k over 4 laps around a housing estate and then along the seafront. The housing estate had people supporting but was literally running through alleyways and around little cones. The sea front was obviously more picturesque but no public access and so was completely dead aside from a photographer and other athletes for company. It was on the run where I noticed more the lack of watch. I HATE lapped courses because counting laps is a pain and also it means there were no distance markers. I don’t really check my watch on run sections of races apart from to check in on distance. I’ve worked a lot on feel and rhythm this year and to be honest I don’t need data to tell me if I can push harder. I settled into the run nicely bringing my breathing and legs back from the bike during the first lap. As with the bike a few athletes did come past at a really great pace. Obviously, I’d no idea which lap they were on or which Age group they were in. I don’t like to use aid stations on a run really. I wasn’t feeling any tangible effects of the lack of water but knowing I hadn’t had a drink all race I grabbed a mouthful each lap. That also helped me tick off each lap in my mind. I settled in, found a rhythm and got to work. I often think of Kipchoge talking about the more it hurts the more he tries to smile. This is something I like to try, the smile often comes out as a grimace but it can help me feel the positivity when working hard. I was also talking my way through keeping form, the phrase “relax and go faster” came out again! After a little bit of thought and cross referencing how many mouthfuls of water I’d had I reminded myself I was finishing this lap and like the local waste management companies it was time to dump everything I had, and get it done. I peeled off to run down the ridiculously long and quiet 300m+ finish line. It was so quiet and as it happened there weren’t even any other athletes around me to either chase or be chased home by.

I finished to an almost eerie kind of  silence, given a nice wooden medal and a nice AF beer (couldn’t tell you which one) which I got straight onto and a lovely Sunderland Triathlon branded towel. I sipped my beer, watched a few of the AG podium ceremonies. There was no way to access the results at the finish so aside from knowing that I wasn’t top 3 I didn’t know how I’d faird. I felt a bit lonely and a weird feeling of mild surprise  or confusion that the race was over. I was in a really weird head space to be honest. Pretty dazed, like my body had almost completely turned off my emotional response tap. I wasn’t high or low. I did, however, start to feel the inevitable blisters I get owing to foregoing socks in exchange for a few extra precious seconds in T2. I was starting to feel like I wanted to be more comfortable so I went to make my way from the finish area on the beach back to transition. It won’t surprise you by now that this took much longer than is fair on a load of athletes who’ve just given everything for around 2 to 4 hours and can now feel every raw, weeping blister on their feet! I’d say what looked like a 5 minute walk took 15/20 minutes owing to the multiple cross points of a live bike route and the narrow one way system.

I was planning on getting into some comfy gear, getting pizza, coffee some more AF beer, watch the elites do the relay and finding some atmosphere to soak in. I checked to see where the “event village” was. Google was telling me it was a 10/15 minute walk which I knew due to the event logistics would be more like 30 mins. It was a shame but at that point I chose to go back to the car and come home. It wasn’t Leeds, surrounded by friends to celebrate with, easy access to food and drink and general space to move around. That’s fine, it is what it is. I maybe felt a tickle of annoyance that it felt over so abruptly but as with everything else which had gone a bit “off piste” on the day, it didn’t seem to land significantly. I internally shrugged, “Ok, fine”. I will note that Graeme messaged me to ask how the race went and received a garbled stream of consciousness. The only things I could recall were all the little negatives which had happened. At that point I had no idea about how I felt about any of it really! I wasn’t angry or any of the “BIG” emotions. Just maybe irked that something so special was being ruined by crappy logistics. It was after I’d messaged him and found a bit of space away from the course that I thought to finally check the results. 

10th in my Age group and 75th overall and most importantly with regards to Age Group qualification I was 109.48% of the winning time in my category. Maybe this doesn’t seem so great, especially against what I did at Woodhorn. For context, at the same race in Leeds last year I was 119.36% of P1. To improve 10% against such brilliant humans in such a vastly competitive category I think is a fantastic result. Owing to many factors the three Open Age Group categories G, H and I often have the largest number of athletes competing for GB squad places as well as often occupying the overall top spots in races. So, to squeeze into the top 10 is great. The Idea that I finished 75th in a national race is staggering and a genuine point of pride. I also found that I equaled my 10k run pb (assuming the course was 10k as stated) which maybe shows how out of date my run PB’s are.

The following day I was really spaced out. Like I was a car in “limp home mode” I could function but not how I really expected to. I went to get a coffee and was trying to coherently talk through the race and was struggling. I was a babbling mess. Physically I was ok. Tuesday run club I felt like I wasn’t far off 100%. I was thinking that after so many parkruns being sensible and just following “the process” I would treat myself to a full, rested, 5k blast around a park! Then Wednesday I started feeling a little bit off. I received an email from the race organisers informing that a large number of athletes were suffering from illness post race. I  suffered through Thursday and by Friday was feeling like I was starting to come through it. So recovery has taken a bit longer thanks to the implied sub-standard water quality during the swim. Ironically the swim was the only part of the course I felt they’d got right at the time! I’m sure I’ve not suffered as bad as some and was planning on having a week off training the week following the race anyway so not a big disaster personally. 

I still don’t know If I’ve done enough to qualify for a GB Age Group place at either The European Sprint Championships or The World Standard Championships at the time of writing but, I know my progression this year has been superb. This is mostly down to the “self coaching” project and like I said at the top I’m intending to explore that project and write up a bit about it at some point as It’s made more than just a positive impact on my hobby.