Blokes Tri Series - Race 2 report

I'll start with a short race report from my second triathlon of this season – the Blokes Series, Race 2 – 200m pool swim, 15km cycle and a 4km run which was held on the 5th of December


It was hot, damn hot – I’m talking 18 degrees at 6.00am when I arrived to set up our gazebo as we’re one of the sponsors. By race time 8.30am it was about 25 degrees and it got to over 30.

I set up my bike in transition and decided to take a walk around just to try and relax.


I have been sick for about 6 weeks and the best way I can describe it is having a chest infection that feels like someone is sitting on my chest so every time I take a breath, my chest feels “restricted” not to mention I have a massive fit of the coughs. It was very frustrating.


Anyway – got transition all set up and was feeling average and spent a while chatting to a few of the guys and we were all “talking it up” as you do and I mentioned that I was going to take it easy and just try to finish BUT if I wasn’t up to it, I’d just pull out and not finish.

The swim was 200m in the pool and I was in the 2nd wave, 30 seconds after the first wave. I am so at home in the water and this reflected in the swim. 10 guys in each wave, I was in the 2nd wave and I caught up and passed 4 of them even though I was taking in easy.

Very happy with the swim and managed to conserve energy that I would need later.


Ran to transition and had probably the best transition I have ever had thus far – went so smooth that I wouldn’t change a thing.
Headed out on the bike course and decided early that I would take it nice and easy – that worked well for about the first km when people started to pass me. I jumped onto the back of one guy’s wheel and we worked as a team taking turns drafting. We picked up another guy and the 3 of us worked well for about the next 10-12 km and then I started to run out of steam. They dropped me with a km to go and all I could think about was, I have no energy left for the run.

Finished the bike and had another very good transition, racked the bike, off with helmet and on with the running shoes (I tried for the first time to leave my cycle shoes still clipped into the pedals and slipped my feet out of them about 400m from the entry to transition and just put my feet on top of them but kept pedalling – this worked a treat and have since used this technique again)

On with my cap and out onto the run course – it was a 2 lap course of 2km laps, 4km in total and I was worried that I had used all my energy on the bike and really found it tough for the first lap but then came right and felt good on the last lap. I finished strong and beat last year’s time for the same event. This was my original goal but I had put it out of my mind when I started feeling ill.

Official stats:

71 competitors overall and 29 in my age group 40-49 years

I finished 46th overall out of the 71 and I finished 14th out of the 29 in my age group. The winner in my age group won with a time of 45min and 48sec. My time was 57min and 31sec.