The Brighton and Hove Triathlon is somewhat of a hometown race for me, having been born and raised just a few kms down the road in the infamous party town of Eastbourne. I had raced the event back in 2017 when I first got into triathlon and once again it did not disappoint.
The B&H Triathlon was a qualifier to the 2020 ETU European age-group championships in Estonia, which meant that the field would be far stronger than previous years. Given my sub-par swimming I decided not to bother with the qualifier admin fee as I figured my chances of getting a place were low (spoiler alert: I was right). It wasn't until registration and racking that I realised there was a separate qualifying wave and that my "open" category would be not be racing together. This was very apparent during racking when my bike was simultaneously one of the nicest in the open category racks and one of the worst amongst the qualifier category racks. No excuses then...
The race starts with a sea swim. Although I never thought I would say this, I am actually starting to enjoy swimming. After nearly two years of ad-hoc, once a month swims and telling myself “I’ll start swimming next month” and “the bike and the run is more important” it finally came to a head at Leeds Castle Triathlon in June. After posting an almost glacial 34 minute swim and getting out the water feeling like I had just run a marathon, I decided that it was time to address the elephant in the room. I made a deal with my wife myself that if I swam 40km in July then I could buy myself a dedicated TT bike. This incentive appeared to work as I ticked over the 40km with a day to spare and became the proud owner of a Canyon Speedmax. I followed this up with another 40km month which meant I'd nearly doubled my lifetime meters swam in two months (You can probably see where the 34 minute swim came from now).
With my lack of long-term swim training in mind I knew I was not going to set the world on fire in the swim but didn’t want to give up the usual 10+ minutes to the leaders. Conditions were very slightly choppy, but after some josling and involuntary gulps of seawater I managed to settle into somewhat of a rhythm. The current meant that following the pack sometimes proved the wrong decision, with my route between buoys not always being the most direct. After some poor sighting and unnecessary wiggling around I exited the water feeling by far the freshest I have ever felt entering T1.
Official time: 28:54
Strava Activity
Coming into T1 was a novel experience for me as there were other bikes still racked! My recent swim training had meant I had not been met with the usual barron bikeless transition that only the worst swimmers get treated to. I slipped on the shoes and sprinted to the mount line, attempting a very ungraceful semi flying-mount start. With it being the first race on the new bike I was weary of getting overly excited with my newly purchased speed and absolutely hammering the first 10km. I had ear-marked 1 hour as a “nice goal” so made sure to never push much above 40km/hr. The course consists of 8 laps of an absolutely pan flat 5km out and back loop so after the initial excitement I settled in and tried to squish into the most aerodynamic ball that I could make.
The bike leg went past pretty smoothly, with the bike performing flawlessly. The bright orange shoes meant that family and friends could spot me easily and I occasionally heard the shouts of “Go on Ollie!” come from my parents. At the end of the final lap I went to initiate my second ever flying dismount by undoing my shoes whilst rolling. With my left foot released, I realised that I had massively misjudged how much road was remaining and had to resort to an extremely dignified “one shoe on, one shoe off” flying dismount. My somewhat reckless “Let’s do it live!” approach had worked wonders at Leeds Castle earlier in the year, however, I had not taken into account the fact that I had fitted my TT bike with my old ‘easy unclip’ beginner friendly pedals. This meant that the moment I started running, my still clipped in left shoe hit the ground, ejected and flew into the barrier. After a brief thought of “F-it, I’ll buy another pair of shoes!” I sheepishly ran back to retrieve it from the lovely volunteer who had come to my rescue. That’ll teach me for not practicing my transition at all.
Official time: 59:49
Strava Activity
Coming into T2 was another novel experience as there were two bikes. I had thought that I could post a somewhat decent bike time but had not expected to make up this much ground. The only thing left between me and a podium was the run. My running had been going well over the summer months so I was confident that I could post a decent 10km time. The only unknown was whether I could post a decent time after 90 minutes of racing. Similar to the bike, the run course consisted of 4 laps of a pan flat 2.5km out and back loop which gave the perfect opportunity to see my competitors ahead (as well as practice my poker face at the turnarounds). I started the run behind second place by around 500m with another few hundred meters to the leader. I settled into a not too uncomfortable 3:40-3:45 km pace and ate a gel. Initially it felt like I was slowly closing the gap but wanted to be patient and see how the first half played out. Distant thoughts of catching the leader and triumphantly winning briefly entered my mind, but were unequivocally squashed on the third lap when I discovered that the leader had already finished! It transpired that he was an absolute monster who was both the European and World age group champion and had been a whole lap ahead of us! Feeling very grateful that I didn’t embarrass myself by emptying the tanks and making a heroic but pointless pass, I began my final lap. Second place had held the gap steady and I ran it in for third.
Official time: 37:37
Strava Activity
Overall time: 2:08:36
I crossed the line to greet the announcer and first two finishers. We got to stand on the podium, received a handful of prizes and even did a “champagne-style” spraying each other with water bottles (who says Triathletes aren’t crazy guys?!). Overall it was another great event and one that I will definitely revisit.
Right, now to start panic training for my upcoming trail marathon...