BUCS Standard Triathlon, 25 Jun 2023

“Even if I knew I would feel like this after, I still wouldn’t have changed the way I raced”. This is the sentence I uttered to my boyfriend on the drive back from Norfolk on Monday morning, suffering from stomach pain and the side effects of heat exhaustion. He thinks I’m crazy. In fact, even as I write this a week later, I have just pulled out of a race I was meant to be competing in this morning, because I just haven’t felt myself since last weekend. So, I guess you could say that the race was pretty gruelling.

We started at 4pm, with a temperature of around 30 degrees and the sun blaring overhead. The heat meant that the swim was declared non-wetsuit, a novelty to me, but I wasn’t too concerned about this – at least T1 would be fast! I was, however, feeling nervous in general. Placing in the top 20 would mean that the half Blue I currently held would become a full Blue and getting university colours is quite a big deal at Oxford. However, with a year of my degree left, I reminded myself that this wouldn’t be my only opportunity to compete for a Blue. (This only eased the nerves slightly, for I’m inherently competitive and once I had set my sights on the colours, I found it hard to let the thought go).

There wasn’t much time to stew on my nerves though, since the race start was fast approaching and I realised I had given my hat and goggles to Alex (boyfriend), who had disappeared and whom I spent a frantic 15 minutes pre-race trying to hunt down. Success. I wouldn’t have to swim blind!

Once this conundrum was over, I joined the rest of the team just in time to listen to the race briefing. Then the men set off. There was a 10 minute gap before they let the women start, and I took this time to do a few warm up lengths to the first buoy and back and to look at how the men were swimming. It seemed that their trajectory was wide, which led me to tactically position myself on the inside. This was perfect because from my sighting, it seemed that many of the women were also swimming wide, while I was able to take a more direct course. After the initial surge in the water where I was swimming alone, I found some feet, and settled into a good rhythm. The girl I was drafting was swimming a little slowly for me, but I think this was the draft because I found myself using a lot of energy trying to overtake her. I resigned myself to just conserving energy and staying on her feet. I was surprised to see that there were very few people ahead of me and that the yellow kayak guiding the leader wasn’t far from me! My swimming background puts me in good stead for Triathlon, but I honestly don’t find myself swimming that regularly, so I wasn’t expecting to be anywhere near the front group at BUCS. Things slowed down a bit as we passed the furthest buoy and I remember feeling confused about the break in rhythm. It turned out that we had caught the tail-end of the men and spent the last 400 or so metres weaving in and out of them. This was a bit frustrating, and I think it cost me quite a bit of time because I ended up coming out of the water in 20th place.

Then a quick T1 (7th fastest!) and onto the bike. I took on a gel and got my head down, remembering to keep my cadence high. I was pleased to find that I wasn’t feeling too drained from the swim and was able to push quite a high power and even managed to set a new FTP by a few watts! The bike passed quickly – it tends to be my favourite part of the race, and I gained a few places, coming out with the 13th fastest bike split of all the women.

T2 was uneventful, with the exception of having to duck under one of the racks because I had turned too early and realised too late that my number was on the adjacent rack, and then we were onto the run.

10k isn’t my favourite distance – a bit too long or a bit too short depending on which way you look at it, so I knew that this part was probably going to hurt. Besides, the heat, which I had been relatively unbothered by was truly making itself known. I had drunk almost a whole 750ml bottle during the bike, but almost as soon as the run started, I felt dehydrated. Knowing that cramps and bonking were issues to look out for, I kept quite a conservative pace to begin with, not letting myself get carried away by the fast pace of some of the runners around me. It paid off, because by 2k I had passed quite a few people. It seemed that the heat was really affecting people and I was glad that I had had the foresight to put on my visor and sunglasses – at least the sun was out of my face. As time passed, I found myself entering a kind of flow state, there were whole minutes where I didn’t notice the time go by. It wasn’t that I was enjoying myself particularly, it was just that I wasn’t feeling the pain. This was broken at 5km, when I saw the finish line, but knew I had another lap to do. Briefly then, I felt like giving up, taking my foot off the gas. I was overheating, dehydrated and had no idea which place I was in – I had asked Alex and he had given a very unconvincing “16th?” as I passed him, so I had no real gauge of whether I was in the top 20 or not. My 6th km was a bit slower as I was fighting to stay motivated, disturbed by the number of runners I could see lying on the side of the path, surrounded by paramedics. But then I had a thought “what if I’m 21st right now?”, I didn’t want to look back at the pain I had already put myself through with regret or disappointment. There was a girl around 200m ahead of me that had been running well, but who I thought I could catch, so I gradually started going through the gears (though at this point, my top gear was not really all that fast at all) and ended up right on her shoulder. She had looked back at me a couple of times and that was when I knew I had her – she was definitely running scared. I prefer to be the hunter than the hunted, so sitting just off her shoulder and then pushing hard to overtake gave me an extra boost.

That boost carried me over the finish line, where I immediately threw up and then, finding out that I had placed 12th, started to cry. The marshals looked on with worried looks. I was elated. Exhausted but elated.

One year ago, I competed in my first triathlon at Varsity and I’m pretty sure I placed lower than 12th just out of Oxford and Cambridge. This year I had made it into the top 20% of athletes at a much higher level and got university colours. It makes me proud to say that! I’m excited for what’s still to come and am so grateful to Tim for his support and (clearly!) excellent coaching.

Emilia Miller