What a great day at the office !
Despite
a longer roll call on the start list only four Team MK'ers braved the
M6 tp travel North to the Bala Half Iornman this weekend and what a
fantastic race. Set in Snowdonia National Park the backdrop to the
race was the stuff of picture postcards.
Martin Erasmus, Andy
Jones and I travelled up on Saturday afternoon to register and get a
drive of the infamous 'rolling' course before the event. Jevon joined
us later that evening - much later after spending the day at home for
his daughters birthday.
The bike course was changed for this
year only as the Western road back into Bala had collapsed in three
places and had traffic lights in place. That combined with the usual
summer caravan traffic prompted organisers to change the bike course to
an out and back into the hills around Snowdonia - this mde it hillier
and slightly longer. As we drove the bike course Martin E looked
paler and paler as he tried to work out whether the car hunting for
gears was exagerating the steepness of the hills or not!
Dinner
was a 'Triathlete special' put on by a local hotel with pasta, pasta or
more pasta. Martin E was strangely quiet over dinner and refused to be
drawn into a discussion about 'that bike course'. To be fair he had
just had a large training week and no taper so was feeling tired before
he left for the race (or so told me to say on any race report 
)
The day of the race was superb with the sun high in the sky, no rain forecast and a predicted 24 degrees or so.
The
lake was flat calm and about 17.5 degrees so no sign of the 3ft waves
that they saw at the Bala standard distance a few weeks ago.
All four Team MK'ers were in the same wave which saw about 100 or so 'vets' take to the swim.
The
bike course was superb with a great mixture on rolling North Wales
roads and the odd cheeky climb to contend with. The turnaround point
was about 1000 ft below the median height of the race so you got a
great 3 mile descent down to it only to grab a bottle of water and slog
back up it again. Riccione was good practice for this one !
Despite the hills I was happy with my bike speed averaging 19.1 mph for the whole course and finsihing it in 2 hrs 41mins.
Once
off the bike it was onto the run. The Race Director had stated that
'no part of the run is flat' and he wasn't kidding. An undulating road
around the lake turned into a b*tch of a hill at the end for the 6.5
mile turnaround with about 2 miles of steady climb up to the half way
feeding station as my download below shows.
The run back was easier, albeit on tired legs and the finish was on the lakeside just outside the Leisure centre.
Despite the heat all of us posted good times (PB's?) with jevon storming the course with a stonking sub 5 hour effort !
Provisional times were :
Jevon O'Neil - 4:54:53
Graham Mackie - 5:06:54
Andy Jones - 5:18:10
Martin Erasmus - 5:31:25
With great scenery, a friendly atmosphere, marshalls with 'Stop/Go' boards to hold back cars at junctions and a fantastic course I think I can genuinely say that Bala is one of the best Triathlons I've ever been to.
Graham
