Grafham Sprint Triathlon, 16 Sep 2023

I entered this race last minute, a couple of days before the event as I wasn’t quite ready for my triathlon season to be over. The day before I also officially signed up with Catenary Coaching and it just happened that Tim and two other team members would be there - Julia and Lupe - so it would be a great chance to meet them in person.

On race morning, I was very pleased to be doing a local race with an 8am start - not such an early morning for this triathlon! After registering and setting up in transition I met Julia and Tim and it was nice to have some friendly faces to talk to, to settle the inevitable pre-race nerves.

After a mishap with the inflatable swim start and exit deflating, the race finally started. The swim went well until the last 1/4 when some of the front pack veered right towards a buoy not on the course and I was left relying on my own sighting to find the way out. There has been no improvement in my swim speed in open water this year so that is something to work on for next year.

I was pleased to get onto my bike and whizz around the lanes. I caught up with some women in front by the top of the hill in Ellington and just had to maintain my lead. There were two foot down points, one at which I had to wait for a couple of cars. Also on the way into and out of Perry there were several lorries and tractors overtaking bikes on the other side of the road and nearly blowing me off my bike altogether.

Once back in transition I made the classic rookie error of running down the wrong row to try and rack my bike. Eventually I realised and finally found my socks and shoes.

Out onto the run I was just aiming to overtake as many people as possible. I had run this course before in a duathlon and knew the grassy kilometre at the end always decreased the average speed. Finally the inflatable finish line was in sight and the tape was across it. It was fun to realise I was first lady and I got to run through the tape! Tim was there at the end and he’d taken some great photographs and had been shooting and supporting me throughout.

Becky Wright