Season Finale at Shropshire

This was my first 'proper' middle distance race for a while as in the last few years I've gone for a 'different' end to the season race such as the Helvellyn or Sandman tri's. However I was keen to test out how my form would stand up on a course such as this after my transition onto a SEC programme.

The news about the swim being cancelled only reached me at tea time on the Saturday evening, on the downside I was looking forward to trying to 'push myself' on a swim and it would involve a night in the camper of rejigging the kit bag, but on the plus side it probably meant I'd place higher given running is usually my stronger discipline. Whatever, you can only control the controllables and all that so there was no point dwelling on it. But it did lead to an ongoing internal debate about how to pace the first run that carried on until the race started. Eventually I decided to run the first 5k at about a 6-7/10 exertion and not clock watch and was happy with how I felt on the seemingly gently undulating run course.

Coming in to a T1 ahead of coach Paul I briefly mooted retiring from the sport on the spot as it's unlikely to happen again, but on we went with the bike.

One reason I don't like race morning registrations is the slight feeling of being rushed and the potential for small errors. One such error became apparent soon into the bike ride, I'd put the helmet sticker over an air vent and so I had a visor that was badly steaming up and making visibility a challenge, especially on the quicker sections. Despite this schoolboy error I felt good on the bike, holding above the target pace consistently and the flow was only broken by a small group who were determined to draft me then push past only to dawdle along when they got there...this meant a series of race day intervals to try and get rid of them and hope that this would bite me on run two.

The gentle undulations on the run route from the early morning had seemingly developed into significant climbs when tackling them in the late morning sun. It was virtually impossible to pick out who was in what race never mind who was on what lap so it was just a matter of get in the groove, tick the laps off and see what was left in the tank for lap 4.

Overall I was really happy with my time, position, race day mentality and fitness...the SEC plan is definitely moving things in the right direction.