BUCS Standard Triathlon, 25 Jun 2023

It wasn’t an early start for this race as they decided 4pm was the perfect time to start a race in summer… when it was nearly 30 degrees. It should’ve come as no surprise to me that they called a non-wetsuit swim but it made me a bit nervous anyway as I’d never done a non wetsuit lake swim before.

The swim was a bit lonely to start off with as apparently my idea to hit each buoy one by one was not the same idea as everyone else had, which was to head straight for the far one where the first turning was. But I gradually found some other swimmers and swam on their feet, the swim actually went quite quickly in my mind just because I was constantly thinking about who’s feet I could latch onto next and considering it was a non wetsuit swim I didn’t go as slowly as I was expecting.

After a stressful T1 where the tongues of my bike shoes didn’t want to stay in the shoe (grrr) it was onto the bike.

I was really looking forward to this as it was a relatively flat course and it was the first time racing with my new snazzy bike! It was great fun, I reckon I could’ve gone faster which is annoying looking back on it but I’m still super chuffed with my time.

In T2 I poured a whole bottle of water over me as I knew the run was going to be extremely hot and then off I went. I started out really strong, not pushing the pace too much as the heat was awful and I didn’t want all of my energy to go. Then my back started to get a bit sore about 2.5km in and so as anyone would I had a little lie down to stretch it out! (not my smartest idea as the marshals thought I’d collapsed, whoops!) The only issue with taking this break was I no longer had any momentum to carry forward with me as the heat sapped all my energy. So the rest of the run was 900m run 100m walk to the finish - a man spraying water on everyone with a hose made it slightly more bearable but it’s definitely made me never want to race in that kind of heat again!

All in all it was a nice day out with my University’s triathlon team and it was also great to meet some other Catenary athletes and have Tim there to support! I was also really pleased with my placing - 31st out of 58 really strong women!

Jess Barratt-Drylie