Oxford-Cambridge Varsity Triathlon, 7 May 2022

My first Triathlon! 

I have exams coming up at uni so training has taken a bit of a backseat recently – I’ve still been doing around one session each day, but mentally, it has not been my focus. So I decided that I was not going to put pressure on myself about this race – for me this Varsity was mostly about getting my first triathlon under my belt and having fun!

Unfortunately, I had a pretty disrupted night’s sleep (thanks housemate who forgot his keys at 3am – but that’s a story for another day) so I was pretty grumpy when I woke up on race day. I wasn’t feeling like racing at all after just 4 hours of sleep! However, as soon as I saw my OUTriC friends that morning, I started to feel better, and by 9am I was buzzing to race.

I had done one open water swim the previous weekend and absolutely loved it so I was looking forward to the swim, but it was a mass start (which I have never done before) and I found this incredibly challenging. I ended up in the middle of a pack of bodies – it felt like we were sardines in a tin! I wouldn’t call what I did for the first 100m ‘swimming’ – more like trying not to drown; people were kicking and clawing to get away and I hardly moved to begin with. By this point I was feeling pretty panicked, the water was dark and I felt like every time I attempted to breathe, I got a mouthful of water. It was not a pleasant experience. I am a pretty strong swimmer, with that being my sport when I was a kid, but I ended up getting out of the water behind many of the tri club members I usually swim ahead of! It wasn’t my best performance…

I took a bit of extra time in T1 to calm myself down; I wanted to forget about the swim and shift my focus. The first lap was just spent trying to get used to the course, but after that I really enjoyed the bike. I spent a lot of time on my TT bars, and got much more confident with handling and overtaking on them. I have to say, this was quite a conservative effort from me – I was thinking about my experience at Mallory Park and didn’t want to overdo it on the bike and have a terrible run, but looking back I think I played it a bit too safe: I averaged only 180W, but I did manage to overtake quite a few people and came off the bike feeling pretty fresh.

T2 was fast -  just 47s, and then I was onto the run. At this point I realised that I should have probably taken a bit more time to check my shoes as one of them wasn’t on properly – the heel of the shoe was digging into my Achilles. Luckily, this didn’t cause too much of an issue. I managed to have a very decent run, and actually came out with a 5k PB of a few seconds! It was nice to have an out and back course, as all the Oxford athletes were cheering as we went past each other. I was doing a lot of cheering and it did cross my mind that I could probably be running a bit faster if I wasn’t shouting the name of each team member I passed! But I had fun during the run, and after such a bad experience in the swim, this mattered a lot!

On the whole, this was a positive race for me. I’m sure that on another day, with a better swim, I would have attacked it more, but I felt strong throughout and learnt a lot. I really want to focus on my swimming now, so I can go into my next race feeling confident about the swim – regardless of what the start looks like! Onto the next!

Emilia Miller