Oxford-Cambridge Varsity Triathlon, 7 May 2022

The day started with a little bit of a drizzle when we arrived, so I was already wet before even getting into the water! The temperature of water was 16°C, so warmer than my recent OW training, which I was very happy about. The start was from the water and tactically I placed myself to the side to avoid the most hectic part of the “washing machine”. The swim was decent, but I feel like I didn't use my full stroke properly, as I was moving my hands a bit too fast, but with no speed gain. I should also try to swim behind someone for longer to use the draft, but I didn’t think of it initially. I spent in the lake 12 minutes in total and placed somewhere in the middle of our wave after swimming.

The bike was the best cycling I've done in my life. After looking at photos from BUCS, I realised I keep my head a bit high, so this time I took the visor off my helmet to have better vision in aero position, and I was focusing on keeping that position throughout the whole bike course. I also played with my cadence a bit. As soon as I started to feel my legs getting a bit tired, I changed to lower gear for about 10-20s to spin faster (but lighter) until it felt ok again to push more. This way, I avoided mid-course energy drop which I usually experience. On the part with head wind, I tried to keep speed not lower than 33km/h and with tail wind 38-39km/h and overall my watch showed me an average speed of 34.3km/h. I even overtook one girl on TT bike, which was very encouraging! Thank you Tim – I never thought I could improve my cycling so quickly and change it from my weakest discipline to my strongest!

The run was a bit disappointing. I didn't know how tired my legs would be after the bike and I let myself go steady, but with the option of pace drop at the first turn if needed. Thanks to that, I had energy for the remaining ¾ of the run, but after about 3km I started to feel my knee (which has been niggling for a few weeks) again and I couldn't go faster because of that. 

I placed 38/75 overall, 12/36 female and 2nd female from Cambridge with total time of 1:14:08.

Maja Radecka