By Katie Fitzgerald.
A 11a.m. start and a 3 hour journey meant a rising time of 5.10am and departure time of 6am for the
village of Loughmacroy in county Tyrone. Captain Tadhg Cronin driving, myself as self-nominated navigator and two sleepers in the backseat, Ellen and Sharon. Chats and gossip were mighty the whole way up the road, so much that Ellen couldn’t manage to get a wink of sleep, keeping an ear in on the juicy chats that were unfolding with every mile of the motorway; Ellen has since been diagnosed with FOMO- fear of missing out.
Just after 9am we pulled into the church car park of Loughmacroy, 2 hours later we were tucked into our wetsuits and ready to rumble. Sharon with her injured and bandaged hand from an unlucky accident during the week managed to get into her wetsuit with some assistance from Captain Tadhg. Unfazed and brave as ever, she was ready to take on the lough, doing single armed front crawl the whole way if she had to!
Swim: I always follow the same P.O.A during the swim. I swim like a lunatic or as hard as I can go until the first or second buoy (depending on distance) and then latch onto ‘good feet’ and hopefully settle, getting a good draft for the rest of the swim. It’s worked well for me this year so Il keep doing it as long as it works. My good friend and training chum Ellen Shilling (or Ellen Smiling as the race organisers decided to pronounce it) turned out to my tow in this case for the last 300m and I rewarded her with a gentle pat on the bum entering T1 which caught her by surprise…Thanks Ellen! 🙂
T1: Tore off the wetsuit as fast as I could and shoved the aero helmet onto my ceann, my ears keep getting stuck here, anyone else have this problem? ! always a tricky one. I noticed there was was about 4 girls in transition with me so just needed to get out of there asap and start peddaling away on my bike. I’v come to realise how crucial fast transitions are, if a girl has the same biking ability as me but gets away from T1 just 10 seconds ahead, chances are I won’t see her again. So unless you want to be trying to get those seconds back on the run, get that wetsuit off and get out of there!
Bike: 20km, 2 x 10km loops, closed roads. Nice course and surface was pretty decent too. Mostly flat with a few lumps and bumps here and there. With almost 300 people in the race, there seemed to be no drafting going on at all from what I could see. Having 3 waves in the swim had evenly separated out the volume of people, just as well coz I only saw 1 draft buster on the course which is very low for a N.S race.
T2: On the dismount line I saw the leading lady exiting and the 2nd girl just behind her so I knew I was about minute down. Jen O Connell wasn’t too far behind me either in 4th, so again it was a swift effort to get out on the run course as fast as possible to try hold my minute gap over Jen and possibly try and catch up with the girl in 2nd.
Run: I was relieved to find my running legs early on which was great. Usually i’m pretty wrecked getting off the bike and the run turns out to be a painful struggle the whole way through. It’s hard to know how much to push it on the bike and then still be able to hold it together on the run without blowing up halfway through. The run was 5km loop on a beautiful trail run around the lake, defo the nicest run route I’v ever raced in a triathlon. It (almost dare I say!) made the run enjoyable which is a change from the usual pain endured.
There were 2 turn arounds on the run and I knew I was gaining ground on the girl in 2nd so kept on pushing through, but with 1km to go there was not enough time. I finished 3rd, 13 secs behind Siobhan Gallagher in 2nd. Happy days 🙂 I was delighted to get a podium place at a N.S race. Ellen had fantastic race to secure yet another top 10 finish and 3rd in her age group.
All in all, it was a great day out. The 3 c’s; Great company, course and craic. Bar a near hit/miss on the way home with a monaghan driver (I think Tadhg was just making sure I was still doing my job – frightening all the same :O) Tri the Lough had a fantastic location, closed roads and favourable racing weather. There was a solid show from our Piranha men all having great races, led home by Niall McD. Michael Grimes, Gavin McAllister and James Northridge (Cork) all had great races. We were all delighted to jump back into the car and get stuck back into our chats from the morning for our merry trip back to Dublin.
Much thanks to Tadhg for driving and putting up with us girls all the way up and down the road! Much appreciated….. and also for stopping at a petrol station (eventually) on way home 😉
● Best thing about Tri the Lough: Fantastic 5km trail run; scenic and flat.
● Most impressive performance: Sharon McGuire powering through the race with one (functioning) hand 🙂
● Interesting fact learned on the journey: The Battle of Clontibret was fought in County Monaghan in March 1595 during the Nine Years War, between the crown forces of England’s Queen Elizabeth I and the Irish army of Hugh O’Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone. It ended in victory for Tyrone, and was the first severe setback suffered by the English during the war.
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