Holkham 70.3 British Championships, 9 Jul 2023

Wow, I was nervous for this one!! I knew I was in great shape but part of me was putting extra pressure on myself to do really well. But also in the back of my mind was the fact that my last 70.3 was a couple of summers ago and in that I ran 12km with a broken leg (stress fracture). I knew I was stronger than then, but still I needed to prove that to myself.

Cue a 4am alarm after a very hot and humid night’s sleep…

Everything about setting up transition was going well until I decided to put ‘just a little bit more air’ in my tyres. The valve just flew off and all the air just disappeared. A few tears, lots of panicking and begging a lovely outlaw volunteer later and my tyre was sorted!

Onto the swim… pros = the water was a lovely temperature. Cons = the water was green, weeds everywhere, the rising sun meant that sighting was pretty much impossible. Nevertheless, I’d hoped/planned for a 3min swim, but came out of a long measured swim only about 1min down.

Onto the bike. A lovely undulating course where my main focus was to stay on top of my nutrition. Final time of 2:35 was bang on what I’d planned/predicted and the legs still felt good for the run…

The start of each of the three laps was a 2k painful uphill section which was pure hell! But I was running well and chasing people down. The final lap started and the sun came out…it was hot!! But with about 5km to go a lovely random guy started to come past me and I decided to stick with him. The pace increased and running 4:00min/kms at the end of a 70.3 was a little bonkers but I crossed the line ecstatic! Annoyingly the run was 400m longer than it should have been!

I finished 11th overall behind some amazing women, and 2nd in my AG (behind someone from Portugal 🤷🏻‍♀️), but it was, without doubt the deepest I’ve ever pushed towards the end of a race. And crikey, did my legs tell me about it for the next week!!!

It was great to have a little support team there, including Tim, and great to wear the Team Catenary kit and do it proud!!

Sarah Harding