Double Race Weekend

Race 4. July 16th 2007 (Saturday) 20eme Triathlon de la baie du Mont st Michel. Sprint Now this would have to be the weirdest and wettest race I have ever done. Due to the race being its 20th anniversary the field was full and I went to the race unsure if I could even start. The weather was appalling and I was told by the organiser that I would have no problem getting in, just wait at the inscriptions tent with my stuff ready and when everyone has signed in then I could enter. Well 20 minutes before race start and they still would not give me a number. I was stressing. It was pissing down rain, transition was closing and I was not even close to getting ready. Then a man who had a friend that had pulled out of the race gave me a number and the officials accepted the exchange. It was now last call for the transition to close and the whole preparation thing went as a bit of a blur. I got in there, racked my bike and then we were off to the swim start. For this race it is no ordinary swim. Due to the massive tides in the region the start of the race has to coincide with the start of the rising tide. When I say massive I mean 14 metre rise and fall (yes meter) and it comes in at around 30 km/hr. You have to start the race standing on the side of the estuary and when they see the water moving inwards the gun goes. Its pretty nerve wracking as everyone is anticipating the start, jostling and slipping on the muddy banks. My heart rate is increasing just writing this and reliving the ordeal. Ok, I am calm again! Well I didn't see the tide swing but as soon as I heard the gun I leaped and dove into the frigged water. . . . . Black. It was so so muddy that every time I put my face in the water it was like the lights were turned off. As we had no swim warm up at all, my dive had sent a surge of cold water down my back and this and the fact my arms felt like lead after the first 50 meters made me feel like I was mad for trying so hard to even get in the race to begin with. After around 200 metres I found myself in a lead bunch of about 4 guys then my hand hit the bottom. Being super cleaver I thought 'oh I will stand up and run'. I went to stand and that is when I felt the full force of the current. I could not get my feet under me to stand and I felt it would have been quicker to just lay there as opposed to running. I went back to normal swimming and told myself I was an idiot for trying to out run the 30km/hr water! 100 metres or so later problem two presented itself. Due to the winding nature of the estuary, it was always a concern that I would end up in an area of less current and loose time to guys in 'the sweet spot'. The lead pack had broken up. I was in the middle with another guy, two were on the inside and one out wider. I was keeping a check on them all and then to my horror I saw the inner two guys getting to the bank and starting to run!! I swam at almost right angles to the shore to do the same but not long after my course change I heard a bunch of whistles being used to their full capacity and the two runners jumped back into the water to swim again. I then looked to my right and saw that the guy in the middle of the river was a good way in front and I took off after him. Well for the rest of the swim I pretty much zig-zagged up the river chasing others and we all came together at the exit. There were people there to help you out and stop swimmers missing the exit and being taken down stream. I ran into transition third and was first on the bike. That was to be the driest I would be for the remainder of the race. It bucketed down on the bike, so much so that at points I could not see holes and rode through them. I was joined by another guy on he bike and I gladly let him go in front, thinking he can set the pace for the first lap of two and sort of show me the way, then I can pass him when I know the course and get away. Nope! He was strong and I spent the whole bike leg hurting just to keep with him. I took a few more risks in the corners and could gain on the hills but he was better than me on the flats. I was glad not to crash in the wet as some parts were technical and very bumpy. Entering the final transition in was pretty tired and about 15 seconds behind the leader Nicholas Le Hir. As I racked my bike he was running out and third was still 1 minute 30 second out on the road, so the race was between us. I took the first part of the run out strong but very controlled as I thought he would tire after the hard ride and I still had 5 km to get past him. Well he did not tire. The run was 2 2.5km laps on wet muddy grass that crossed little streams and was as slippery as ice. By the end of the first lap I was 5 seconds behind Nicholas and sure he would falter at any moment. He was looking behind lots and hurting himself all the way. I felt crap but wanted to win so kept the pressure on. Its like one of those dreams (well not THOSE dreams!!!!) but the ones where you want to run faster but just keep slipping on the spot. I just could not make my body get closer to the little blue guy in front of me. He kept looking back and I though he was probably thinking "whats this guy doing?" Well I tried but to no avail. I hoped my head would fall of in the last km to take the pain away and I eased up before the line tired and beaten. On a lighter note, as a reward for finishing second I won a nice bag of biscuits! Now that's the race story, but there is more. The race is "The Mont Saint Michel Triathlon" (I have the T-shirt!) But it is not held at the Mont Saint Michel. I know this because Ella, Adam and I drove there and asked "where is the race?" and the parking guy laughed at us stupid tourists and said it was 30km away! Panic. We found it in the direction he sent us, after following lots of skinny winding roads, in the paddock of a tiny town called Le Val Saint Pere. It was a little bit of a let down as I thought a swim at the foot of that place would be super dooper. After the race we left Adam (as he was racing the following morning and the Olympic distance event) to spend the night with the local doctor and his pretty twin daughters (it speculation but I am sticking to the story in my head), and headed back to Rennes for a quick sleep and then off again to race the following morning. Now this race started at a bit after 8:30 PM!! so by the time presentation, pack up, kiss Adam good bye and pack up the bus was over we didn't get out of there till well into the night. Being so close to the Mont St Michel and having not seen it at night Ella and I decided to pop over. Its pretty! But the extra kms had put the gazzole situation into the critical zone and or attention shifted from 1000 year old churches to petrol stations. We pushed it as far as the petrol light would allow and stopped at a petrol station still 50 or more kms from home. At the later hour we were there (1am ish) it was closed and only accepted card in exchange for precious fuel. You guessed it you cleaver cookie. Our cards would not work! So here we were in some tiny town out of fuel, totally soaked, in the middle of the night and having to get the team bus back to Rennes by 9 the next morning to go race again. At least I was sort of ready as I still had my race suit on! After the longest 40minutes I can remember, contemplating the bus as a bed, a car load of A platers (P platers) stopped and we gave them money for fuel they could obtain by using their (not rejected 70 times) card. And everyone lived happily ever after, until the next day anyway!

Result from race 4. 2nd Lesson learned. Enter races early. put more petrol in the bus.

Find out how Adams race went at: www.beckworthracing.com

Race 5. July 17 2007. Brittany Championships Contre la Montre par equipe (Sprint) Early wake up for this one. Now I have done one of these races before and it was not all the fun it is cracked up to be. This time I was in a team of just three. Gwenn, Pierre and myself. It was important for our team to finish in the top 3 in this race as it was the last selection race for the club to qualify for the French cup in October. In the French cup every club that can get a team represented races and it sets the ranking for all the clubs in France by where they finish. It had rained all night and the trend continued on our way to and at the race site. By the time we got racing it had thankfully cleared and the roads were near dry. Our team was last to start out of about 80 or so teams, as last year we were the best (I didn't race). Each team starts one minute apart and race together with a maximum of 5 guys, and a minimum of 3 to finish. Starting with only 3 is a big disadvantage as there is fewer people to work on the bike and it can be a risk if something goes wrong (flat tire, leg falls off, someone dies). The team one minute in front of us were the raging favourites, Rennes. They are a division one team with many strong guys to pick a good team. In the swim I struggled, for air and ability as Pierre set the pace. I hung on and swam next to Gwenn most of the way so we all got out of the water as a little group and headed up to transition. And I mean up to transition. It was about 300m of uphill to the bikes, and it felt like it took 8 minutes. I needed food on the way I'm sure. We got on our bikes having taken 10 seconds out of Rennes in the water. The bike course was run over part of the world titles bike course so had paint and writing all over the road. It was a three lap course with one 2 km climb and another shot and super steep climb. Pretty tough. It was also very windy and a bit technical, Oh great! On the bike Gwenn found the going pretty tough so it was Pierre and I that set the pace. It cant of been too much of a pace as we got off the bikes 1 min 20 sec behind Rennes!! I felt good in the body but angry to be so far behind in the race so took off solid in the early part of the run. After about 300m I turned to see Gwenn had fallen behind so I told Pierre to run at his own pace and I will go get Gwenn. I pushed Gwenn, which might sound mean, but it was an assisting type of push, and it made him run much faster. It also made me much more tired. At one stage Gwenn built up so much momentum he ran passed Pierre, so I stopped pushing him and pushed Pierre back into the lead. I was very happy with how we ran as a group and when we crossed the line, thought we must have eaten some of the time back to those Rennes wankers (actually real nice guys, but it sounds tuff to call them wankers). Nope. They had ran 40 seconds quicker than us. There was not much else to say really. I tried to steal a prize off one of the girls in the winning team and later we gave our trophy to a drunk guy who looked like joining us in the bus for the trip home. He was stoked and kept shaking our hands and smiling. We passed him 15 min's later as we were driving off and he was still clutching it. He didn't recognise us at first (it had been a long 15 min's and we were all in camouflage fluro Cesson yellow!!), but when it registered he gave us a big wave and blew a few kisses. As with tradition, on the way home Pierre made us stop at "Mc do" for some well needed hot food.

Result from race 5. 2nd Lesson learned. Avoid this sort of race at all costs. Drunk guys love second place trophies. Pierre is addicted to Mc Do.

Race 3. Port Brillet (1500/40/10) 10 June 2007

It was not hot when we left but it was sure warm when we arrived back in good old Port Brillet. Much like one year ago the small town had come to life and was as hot as ever. All the boys from Saint Jean de Monts team were there strutting around in their flashy team outfits. They are a funny bunch of guys and girls, I just hate that they have nicer uniforms than us. . . . and they know it.

The course was the same as last year, which I was happy about as I didnt have to spend 20 minutes asking where the course goes only to find out the guy I asked doesn't really know and is telling me where a good bread shop is. I got in the water nice and early just to keep cool and once the others joined did a small warm up and made my way to the start line. It was a deep water start and there was a fair bit of jostling for position for the extreme left of the start line. I opted to move about 15m right, more towards the middle of the line. It was a bit of a risk as I had to swim a little further to the first buoy and was away from all the good swimmers, but I thought it would be ok as I could get a cleaner start and then push over. Well for me there was no start gun. I just sensed everyone swimming and took off also, in fear of being swam over and pushed to the back of the race. It all worked out pretty well and when I finally moved over I was in about 5th position, just a few body lengths off the leader, who was Adam. At the far turn it all sort of broke up and I found the guy I was following started to loose contact with the leaders. I surged past him and tried to bridge the gap but as I drew level with him he started swimming into me, forcing me off course and knocking my head and arm each time he took a stroke. I had a little think, looked behind and saw no one on his feet so slipped behind him and took it easy for a little while. Once I felt good I sprinted past him and went out wide so he couldnt get my drag (he still did) and kept the pace on until we exited the water. It was annoying because we both used allot of energy, lost time to the leaders and swam further than we needed. I got out of the water in 4th 40 seconds behind the race leader Benoit Buchard and had a pretty quick transition. On the bike I got into 3rd passing Maxime Hillairet (Saint Jean de Monts) pretty quick and within about 6km was close enough to the lead two to be happy again. I choose my moment and hammered past them, kept the pressure on and didnt look back for the next 5km. When I did look back I saw I had aa good sized lead so kept the pressure on for the rest of the bike leg. I didnt see the drafting motorbike very much at all which made me think the pack behind were all riding together and the bike wanted to keep a close eye on them. I knew one guy form the team Les Sables D'Olonne, was strong on the bike and could run well off it as well. He had beaten me in Saint Jean de Monts last year so I hoped he wasn't pulling a big pack of riders up to me (my suspicions were founded on inspection of race photos a few days later). I really hoped he got lost in the swim, but that's pretty mean!

I jumped off my bike with a 1 minute 25 second lead. And I used a fair portion of that before I even got my running shoes on! I ran into transition and to were my bike rack was, popped by back wheel in the rack then heard the arbiters whistle. I had not gone around one of the bike racks, shaving off 2 or 3 seconds of time illegally. I picked up my bike and ran back to the entrance of the transition, then ran the way the official wanted me to run, some 3 meters left of my previous path! Adam did the same thing when he arrived in transition and Penny his wife had to explain what the whistle was all about. On the run I found my legs were pretty tired but not bad enough to make me struggle. All the drinking I had done on the bike came back to bite me as at the end of the first of three laps I started to get a stitch that kept me company for the remainder of the race. On the second lap I caught Laurent Triquet (who was in our team last year). He was on his first lap and seemed happy to see me. He ran with me for the whole lap, talking a bit running into me and stuffing up the drink station. It was crazy. At the end of that lap my lead was reduced to 20 seconds. Benoit was the one doing the chasing. I had not been running too hard but was far from fresh so had to really lift the pace on the last lap. I passed Max in the forest section and he was spent. We were together at the start of the bike and now here he was walking and more than 3km behind. I slowed and asked him if he was ok. He didnt answer me but it looked like the heat had really got to him. I didnt have time to stop, his team mate was chasing me, so I patted him on the back, said "bon chance" (good luck) and kept running. I crossed the line happy to be finished and just over 30 seconds clear of Benoit.

Result from race 3: 1st

Lesson learned: Dance better in transition, dont run with Laurent.

Race 2. La Rochelle triathlon (750/20/5) 3rd June 2007

Team Cesson all piled into the team bus for a journey to the coast to take on the La Rochelle triathlon. Adam, Tom and I were the last 3 to enter the race which took some time to happen due to some minor communication breakdowns. I had eaten far less Ravioli before this race so felt good as we lined up on the start line staring at the first buoy that (common place in France) was not straight out but over to the right of where we started. The crazy arbiter (race referee) made everyone keep all parts of their toes behind the line and kept walking up and down, delaying the start and threatening to pull out red cards to anyone you even looked like slipping a toe nail on the line and gain a precious 2mm advantage. Never mind the guys pushing from the back or the fact the line was not straight, he stuck to his guns. As soon as the gun went I pushed off the guy who had been molesting me from the second row and took to the waters to swim and wash. By the first can I was in about 4th position and stayed that way until shore. It was a rough swim as the course made us swim across the path of the waves and I spent allot of the last part of the swim leg hitting a guy that was doing the same to me.

Adam had lead out the swim by 20 seconds and I put in a bit effort at the start of the bike leg to get to him alone. It was in vain as the guys behind me profited off my drag, but refused to help. Before long there was a lead bunch of ten guys, of which I would say 5 were legitimately working. I did a bit of swearing, knocked a few guys who tried to cut in on me, then tried a few times to get away. It was a two lap flat but technical bike course with pretty strong winds. By 2/3Rd's of the way around the first lap I was stuffed. And then it all happened. There were a few weak attacks and then one guy went up the road and I went with him. we got a small gap but not enough, so I sort of sat up a bit as we passed the crowed and finished the first lap. Another two guys form Saint Jean de Monts joined us and we were a group of four. They seemed intent on keeping the pace going and it wasn't until I looked back and saw the lead had actually increased, that I understood why. That was it a good break was made and we all worked hard for the remainder of the lap, coming into transition just over one minute in front of the chase pack of 6.

I let the French guys lead in on the bike so I could copy the way into and out of the transition, and as I put my shoes on watched them go the wrong way. As I ran out my friendly arbiter from the start line blew his whistle in my ear, reminding me to turn my number to the front. What a nice chap! After 300m I had caught back up to second and just behind the lead guy from the division one team of Parthenay. He lead over the hill past the crowed and then hit the wall, leaving me in the lead almost by default. I pushed the pace for the next km and found myself with a comfortable lead and a lead bike to boot (less chance of getting lost). The guy on the bike was in for a big chat until I told him I couldnt understand much of what he was saying, he then kept the chit chat to a few key French sayings I could understand. Little changed from then on and I won the race. The end.

Adam came in fourth and Tom fifth, after both running away from anyone they came off the bike with. That elevated our team to the number one position, and made for great success on the podium.

Race 1. Laval Triathlon (1500m/40km/10km) 26th May 2007

The first race for my New French season was back at good old Laval. The day was super wet and windy, not the best way to ease back into racing and almost spookily like my first race in France one year ago (where I ended up in hospital).

Laval is about 70km away from where we are staying in Rennes, almost a local race feel. As with the year before the swim was in the river around two very old and pretty bridges, the bike was a solid 40km 2 loop course with about 450m of climbing and the run was 3 laps on each side of the river. Well I had a pretty poor start after being told we didnt need to go around the first buoy and then in the first 10m getting told but the race arbiters to swim sideways to . . . . yep, go around the buoy! I completed the remaining 1450m of the swim in fourth position all alone glancing up occasionally to see the lead three (Adam Beckworth, Benoit Buchard and Chris Felgate), draw further away. I exited the water over one minute behind and set off in chase of the lead 3. After about 6km I reached the foot of the first long climb and could see the fluro back of Adam half way up it. By 10km I had caught him and had the other two in sight. I passed Felgate at around 15km and by the half way turn was close enough to Buchard to keep him in sight. The second lap went much like the first and I entered transition about 10 seconds behind Buchard. He went the wrong way in transition, I said Mercy and we left for the 10km run together. Now before the race I had been speaking with Benoits coach for running and learned he had improved through the winter. I thought little of it until about 2km in when I surged a little and he effortlessly responded. For the next 6km we ran side by side and would have knocked elbows at least 76 times. All this time I was thinking of how I could beat him? how well can he sprint? will I make it at this pace? what is that French official saying? Should I have eaten 50 cent ravioli for lunch?? It was all pretty mentally and physically straining. With two km to go he finally faulted and as soon as I felt him struggle I took off. After 100m of surging away I was stuffed by I had played my card and had to pretend I was ok. I ran just a little faster, played with my sunglasses and waved to Raphs son Paul, hoping Buchard would see and think 'oh hell hes cruising!' The last 1km was actually pretty easy as the damage had been done and the gap was big enough. I crossed the line 22 seconds clear of Benoit who looked pretty tired and 37 seconds ahead of Jerome Jussemet, who rode and ran his way through the field. Adam was the second Fluro Cesson home in 5th.

Results: Laval triathlon: windy, wet and cold, 1st

Lesson learned: Go easy on the ravioli, swim faster.