Paul Newsome, Colin Chamber and Martin Shoesmith traveled to the Euro and World Sprint Qualifying event on Saturday 31st May. Being a youngster, Paul was rewarded with a 7.30am start, Colin and I, being very old, a 12pm start. This meant Colin and I travel up and back in a day, leaving Cuckfield 7.45am. The event is held in and around the international rowing center at Holme Peirpoint, a 2km long, perfect rectangle lake, about 1.7m deep (I could stand up).
Transition is interesting, it's a "double transition" area,
which means you have to leave your
running shoes in T2, all alone…with no bike for company. Which
makes finding them amongst another 249 pairs potentially tricky.
Its a good job I left a "flag"
to find mine, Colin's are bright pink so he was OK.
The Swim was nuts, 250 in our wave, I should have brought the
dirty washing to this big washing machine. There was a ton of weed
in the water, and for 150 meters it was getting stuck in my fingers
and feet, if we had got out at this stage, like they do at the
World Series, we would have all looked like a platoon of wetsuited
camouflaged SAS commandos. Exit from the lake is via a soft and
grippy blue carpet… just like the pros, heaven. Then 4
laps around the lake on the bike.
The event is a Mecca for BTF Officials, we were carefully watched from all angles, and 30 cyclist in our wave were "draft busted". There were 2 on motorbikes following us around and around, and Colin was pushing his luck drafting one of them. I escaped, as I had Colin's spare number on. Then T2 to find your trainers, then a run around the lake. On your run, you can see the finish line all the way around the lake and it was mighty tempting to take a quick dip across the 8 rowing lanes for my first ever 1st place.
On the run in, you can see the grandstand, hear the noise of the
crowd, the blue carpet and the finish line. What a super fast time
from Paul, smashing the club record by 3 minutes, what a great
performance. Colin was on a massive PB, but a running injury ended
his chances…it still counts Colin, that's 0-2 for the year BTW. You
get your times straight away, icecream and home. I strongly
recommend this event, its top notch. Allow 3 hours for the drive,
buy bright loud trainers, and ask Colin for his spare number…don't
explain
why.
| Paul Newsome | |||||||
| (M) 25-29 | Mid Sussex Tri Club | 01:01:10 | 12:10 | 0.55 | 28:57:00 | 0.48 | 18:20 |
| Martin Shoesmith | |||||||
| (M) 50-54 | Mid Sussex Tri Club | 01:04:47 | 12:43 | 01:03 | 29:36:00 | 0.48 | 20:37 |
| Colin Chambers | |||||||
| (M) 50-54 | Mid Sussex Tri Club | 01:04:52 | 12:11 | 0.58 | 29:08:00 | 0.54 | 21:41 |
Martin
Shoesmith 2nd June