BUCS Sprint Triathlon, 1 May 2023

I arrived at the venue for 8:30 registration as the first wave was off at 9:30. My race wasn’t until 2:30 so I had ages to chill and watch other people!

By the time 2:30 came around it was nice and sunny but a bit breezy. I started the pool swim and managed to overtake the two people who started before me in my lane and swam to a 400m PB!! I was super happy with this as everyone who had swam earlier in the day has complained about how choppy the pool was so I wasn’t expecting a very fast time.

It was a long run to transition, where I was just concentrating on calming my breathing so I didn’t get too tired too quickly. Then onto the bike, the windy, pothole central, bike course… Luckily I’d driven it the day before so knew where all the worst potholes were. I started really strongly, hitting speeds much higher than I’d dreamed of, then the wind came for the second half which was brutal but I just kept pedalling though and still got a very decent time. This was the first race with my new TT bars and I managed to stay down on them for most of the course which I was super happy about. Unfortunately I managed to lose my water bottle out on the bike course as it slipped out of my hand when trying to put it back in its cage! This meant that when I got to the run I was very very thirsty!

Onto the run and I had to wait a mile until I could get some water from the hydration station. I settled into a nice rhythm - it felt quite slow, but was all I could do as I was pretty dehydrated and water was the only thing on my mind. But once I got some everything got better and I was running at my target pace, even though there was some cross country involved!

Finally I crossed the finish line and I’d done tonnes better than I ever expected I would, which is a great confidence booster for this summer of racing!

Jess Barratt-Drylie