Race Report: Newbie does Beastie

By Hugh Larkin.

Although I had joined the club back in Feb/March, due to various self-inflicted injuries, the Beast of the East was going to be my first triathlon. This news was greeted by the more accomplished members of the club with a short sharp inhalation of breath or in Elena’s case – while observing me in the beginners’ swim lane – “Have you ever swum 1,500 meters?”. Andi – a fellow swimmer in the lane – declared however that I was the “hero of the beginners’ swim lane” as no one else from our lane was doing the full thing. It was unrealistic pep talk but I liked it.

One of my prevailing injuries was some foot ligament damage and meant that I had been resting my foot as much as possible. I had done a grand total of 16k running over the last three months, so this race was going to be interesting – though I was still more worried about the swim part since it’s hard to drown while running.

I registered on the Saturday as I prefer my bed to queuing up on a Sunday morning. Going to Base2Race also gave me an excuse to shop – I needed some bodyglide, but they don’t stock it, instead recommending ‘Century Riding Cream’. A century is a long time, so I thought this must be good stuff indeed. Those who went early on Saturday got a choice between a technical T and a Buff. Registering at 5pm I was handed a bag with a Buff in it, so went back and asked if there was a T-shirt available. One of the kind registrars went and found “the last” T-shirt, fortunately size medium but when she held it up I decided nah, it just looks a bit tacky. And without a clearly stated frame of reference I’m not sure many guys want to be seen wearing a T that says “I tamed the beast”.

On to the morning of the race – arriving about 7.30am – being the club championship, lots of familiar faces and many more I’ve never come across before. Some unfamiliar clouds in the sky which thankfully hung around for the morning. I have brought a somewhat improvised tri suit – I had missed the order for Piranha tri gear of unmatching blues earlier in the year and there hadn’t been an order since. On the upside the 2014 Piranha collection will be available to order in October so I’ll be a fashion leader then. Until then I’ve come along in a Piranha cycle top and a pair of skins running shorts. Without a chamois I have no idea what the roads of Wicklow will do to my bottom today.

Transition set up and race debriefing done we head into the water. The lake is surprisingly warm which probably doesn’t suit the fact I have prepared for the cold water by wearing my trusty neoprene hat. Spread out over a distance we get accustomed to the water and then without anyone around getting into race start position and without any audible countdown, the race siren goes off and we hurl ourselves into the swim. Now one problem I’ve had in the past is that while wearing a wetsuit, I have a tendency to breath about 50% more than normal, i.e. hyperventilate. I’ve scuba dived quite a bit and generally I’m the one that no-one wants to dive-buddy with because at some stage on most dives I’ll borrow their air from their tank through a secondary mouthpiece. Quite handy for me so I can dive longer but kinda freaks my dive-buddy out (also breaks PADI dive rules, ssh!). I can’t quite explain why it happens (I’ve opted for a wetsuit that’s only 2mm around the chest to help) but I put it down to childhood claustrophobia/bed-wetting issues. I thought I had gotten past it with recent open water swims but this time it’s back and it’s bad. The hyperventilation starts even while I’m just threading water. The first 200m is hellish and find it very difficult to catch my breath properly. In-between getting knocks I run through the rescue-me position in my head several times, making sure it’s second nature in case it’s needed – though to be honest if things get much worse I don’t think I’d be able to flip over. Drowning seems like the easier option. I stay far from the chop of a tight turn and head in the ‘general direction’ of the second buoy – unable to see it over the other competitors and unable to sight too often anyway due to hyperventilation (and now slight panic) taking over. 5 minutes later I’m getting acquainted with a kayaker as I’m way off course, and now I feel that my head is over-heating in the cosy neoprene swim cap. I contemplate taking off the cap (which is under the mandatory yellow cap), but I have a feeling I might get pulled from the water for being in a clear state of delirium. So I try and just get used to the various uncomfortable feelings and focus on sighting and technique (though sighting is a bit depressing at first because the buoy is so far away, I’d prefer to stick my head in the black waters). I get to the second buoy and being now somewhat behind and alone in the swim I feel it’s time to practise the front-crawl/back-crawl/front-crawl buoy turn. Totally nailed it (thanks Sinead McB!) but unfortunately nobody there to see it. After that I don’t remember much of the continued swim torture.

Coming out of the water at 33:58 I had a lot of ground to make up. A huge wave of nausea overcomes me (definitely a new post-swim experience) and as I run along the trail back to transition I feel that pre-puking feeling in my mouth as it waters up and I start to glance around for somewhere discrete and off the barefoot running trail to puke. To the side of transition an ever-smiley Louise is waiting to complete her relay sandwich – she’s cheering me on but I’m looking back at her and she’s taking up a perfect discrete off-trail puking spot, so I think all she gets back is a half-smile/half-snarl. I run on into transition so I can contemplate where to puke – I know most people will have been and gone and I’m racked beside Casso so he’ll definitely be gone at this stage. Perhaps I’ll puke in his transition spot and hide it under his mat?

Wet suit off and breathing returning to normal, nausea calms down. Bike mount line is a fair distance away and my watch later tells me this transition is 570m long. I head out onto the bike course, making an attempt to observe the ITU drafting rules. I feel I’m doing a fair pace, but Piranha Guy #200 overtakes me closely followed by Girl in Pink #343. Was she drafting? Will anyone notice? Given that we’re later in the bike section I feel we’re like the kids at the back of the bus that the bus driver tries to ignore. No motorbike marshals ever pass us by, though several other motorbikes do, causing me to look around each time to check if I’m going to need to shout ‘sketch!’ to the other kids. Also the ITU may have overlooked covering drafting behind civilian cars, or better still the big tractor up ahead with bales of hay on it.

About 25k in to my ride I got a stitch in my side… has never happened before except occasionally while running. So something else new today. I had tried pressing in against the stitch (the common solution?) but chatting along an easy stretch to Wexford Girl #286 about it, she has a technique I hadn’t heard of before – exhale hard and fast. Willing to give anything ago, I did. Undoubtedly pricking up the ears of nearby farmers tuned to the sound of a calf in distress, I found it worked wonders so she has my endless gratitude.

Bike course coming to an end, I try to up the cadence to get my legs ready for the run, but we’re already coming downhill and being advised to slow-down, I guess that lengthy run back to transition will be the warm-up. Approaching transition with my bike in one hand, I can hear the vocally distinctive Mr. Moody on approach. Spotting me, I get a cheer and high fives from the Piranha gang gathered so thank you Emer, Steven, Ciara, Valerie and others whom I was too delirious to remember after the ride. Later Strava tells me that I have a new PB on the aptly named “FFS Hill” – beating all (read: 3) of my friends on it.

I’ve always found 10k runs to be fairly torturous. Being a closet extravert the boredom alone gets to me, and I start finding ways ofamusing myself. First up going through the insta-shower that the fireman were providing and with the paparazzi in place, I playfully pretend to be a stripper taking my top off in the shower. Next in the run I giggle as I try to thumb a lift from a passing car. Clearly not focussed here. The hill continues for some time and even after 1km, people are walking it – it’s gonna be a long race for them and personally I’m not liking this hill either. With my mind idle again, I recall back a conversation I had with Ciara before she went off to Roth to do her Ironman distance triathlon. In short, she glowingly tried to convince me that next year I should do Roth with the rest of the gang, and I was almost swept away with the enthusiasm that she had in her voice and the glass of good red that I had in my hand. Publically I tell her that I’m far too busy living the dream to have time for the amount of training it requires. Privately I am now in my own little hell on a ‘mere’ Olympic distance triathlon that I cannot comprehend the balls of steel she had to take it on. Hats off to Stevie and to you Ciara on your aluminium framed bike, but now I must get on with my run. Fortunately, the organisers watch Star Trek and have learned to replicate their own worm hole here in the hills of Wicklow. The kilometres signage rack up while my watch tells me I haven’t actually done that distance. I pass the half-way turnaround point and another 30 seconds pass before my watch clicks up to the 4km mark. I’m certainly not complaining, I’m aiming for a 3 hour result and besides those transitions rack up several km all by themselves.

Even though I drank plenty on the cycle, I start to get dehydrated on the run now. At first my mouth over-salivates, this gradually gets worse. I think swallowing will upset my breathing too much and I’m too tired to spit it out, so it starts to drool out the side of my mouth and I give it the occasional wipe in case anyone sees. After a while of this the salvia has become foam – flowing out of my mouth. I can see the newspapers headlines the next day – “Mad Man with Rabies Runs the Beast of the East”. I try to pick up water as I go, squeezing the plastic cups at the top so they can be sipped slowly (thanks Moody), but I still choke more than swallow. Next 10k race I’ll give the Geetah Straw method a try before I get picked by the Centre for Disease Control.

I meet Wexford Girl #286 again on the run and she tells me she’s been the one now suffering a stitch, I tell her gleefully that mine is totally gone. We move onto the last kilometre of this 8.7k run and we have our friendly firemen again. My next shower run-through impression for the paparazzi is of a girl washing her hair. Playfully the firemen respond by changing the gentle showering down of water to full-on water hosing directed right at me. My chest goes on fire, it feels like little stones have being sucked up from the river and fired at my nipples. I get pap’d perfectly at that moment (photo below). Now I’ve always chuckled at men who’s nipples bleed – and always wondered did they not do any training to know about this problem before? It had never happened to me before (joy, another race first) but giving my long beautiful flowing locks of chest hair a ‘slight’ trim a few days before the event has left them very unprotected. That evening I find I’m in nipple hair limbo land: too short to protect against chaffing, but too long for a plaster to stay on.

Arriving into the transition area for the final time I head for the finish line. Close to the finish line, Judy is there – normally so angelic and gentile, she gives a roar of “come ON Hugh” at which point I ignore the pain of my nipples that are bleeding out (they grow back right?) and make a superb sprint over the finish line. It’s amazing what boys will do just to impress the girls. An Olympic Tri PB of 2:48:18 (the first ones always are…). I can also report that blood washes out of the Piranha cycle tops surprisingly well.

Ellen, amused (she feigned being ‘impressed’, I feel ‘amused’ is the correct term) that it was my first triathlon, cornered me at the finish line and asked me for a race report. I said I’d think about it, hopefully I’m off the hook for the next while so.

Barbequed out and conversed out they start announcing ‘spot prizes’. I think this somewhat of a term misuse, it’s a who-wants-free-stuff?, run now! I got a free 1kg tub of Kinetica 100% Recovery with the help of Duggan. Had they given me the microphone I could have helped them dish out the spot prizes:
Girl #286 – for fantastic mid-race medical advice
Boy #348 – for the wobbliest looking uphill bike ride, but still overtaking me later on.
Girl #209 – for the best pair of toned arms I saw while out on the bike ride.

I believe everyone when they told me there’d be a euphoric moment as soon as the race was finished. For everyone else it’s like the experience of child-birth – where you forget the awful experience you’ve just had and bask in the glow of the result. Instead for me I felt exhausted & nauseous for the rest of the day. Many thanks to John Walnutt for stopping me as I drove out of the carpark – I had left my saddle bag sitting on top of my roof. Owe you a drink for that. Would have owed you two drinks if you had spotted that I had only attached my bike to the car using a single strap out of the three. Fortunately motorway driving didn’t release my bike to the road! Endorphin euphoria came much later in the evening when I was rested, had an hour’s sleep and ultimately spurred on by a catalyst of Vodka & Red Bull.