Oxford-Cambridge Varsity Triathlon, 7 May 2022

If I’m totally honest, I wasn’t looking forward to this race. It was going to be my first triathlon of the season and I was dreading the cold! I hadn’t practiced any open water swimming prior to the event so as to avoid any hypothermia-inducing conditions. Yes, maybe this was a bad idea… I just prayed that everything would come together on the day and that if I could make it round the swim in one piece and still have some feeling in my toes then it would all be okay!

On the day, the water was a semi-passable 16°C (apparently). The Oxford and Cambridge University wave were set off as a mass start in the lake. Having never experienced this before, it was pretty terrifying! I tried to position myself away from the chaos that was the middle of the pack, off to the side where I had lower chances of experiencing a punch up! However, this put me behind some of the speediest swimmers in the race and I was unable to catch their feet right at the start. I was swimming by myself and without any draft around the entire course. It wasn’t pleasant, and I definitely need to practice my open water technique, but I made it round the swim in 11:44. This positioned me somewhere in the middle of the pack.

I sensed a great feeling of relief that the swim was over and quickly transitioned onto my bike. At this stage it started to drizzle and I was conscious that I would need to take more care than normal on the course, especially as my brake pads were totally worn! The first lap of the bike gave me a good feel for the course and my legs were responding well. I managed to overtake a number of people who were ahead of me on the swim and began to enjoy the race. There was a definite headwind going out one way on the course and tailwind coming back in towards transition. Overall my cycling was very strong and I was very happy with my time of 33:30 – this was over 6 minutes faster than when I had raced this course at the same race exactly a year ago! My cycling has improved massively in one year – thank you Coach Tim for helping me to achieve this. 

I came out of T2 not far behind my OUTriC team-mate, Justin. This was nice because we essentially ran the final 5 km of the race together. The run was a struggle and my legs were feeling heavy, but I had a lot of fun cheering on all my friends as I passed them on the out-and-back course. The sun also came out to brighten the mood. I really had to push to reach the finish line and the final kilometre was painful. My time was a little over 20 minutes for the run and not as speedy as I had hoped. Overall, I made it round in a time of 1 hr 8 minutes. I was 4th female and 3rd Oxford woman, contributing to our win against the Cambridge team. What a great start to the race season and a whole lot of fun!

Jennifer Carter