3rd Dursley Indoor Triathlon (7 December 2001)

Some background
The third annual indoor triathlon champs were held at Dursley swimming pool on Friday 7th December. This event takes place each year to help raise funds for local charities, the benefactors this year being the British Heart Foundation and St Roses (a local school for children with disabilities). It's a good fun event that suits competitors of all levels, from our lot who are used to competing to those who just plod through in order to say that they have completed a triathlon.

Some personal history ...
Having personally won the event last year by quite a bit, I returned this year knowing full well that I would be battling it out with the rest of our crew who have all made considerable improvements this year, especially in the pool. The event consists of a 200m swim, a 2-mile bike and a 2km row. The difference between this event and a 'real' triathlon is that each competitor gets a 2-minute (drying off) period between the swim and bike section and a 30-second transition period from bike to rower. This is so that competitors are not running around a wet poolside.

The improvers
We had most of the usual cross-training guys competing, plus a few others taking part in their first ever event like this. Two of the guys that I train performed well to finish with times of 17min 2secs (Ian Medlock) and 18mins 26secs (Tony Beard) to finish 6th and 8th respectively in the mens 16-40 category. The other competitor in that category was 13 year old Theo Vidgen (Richard's son). Theo knocked nearly ten minutes off of last years time to take 7th place with a time of 17mins 42secs. He also did a PB in the swim with 3mins 3secs (future triathlete? Watch this space!)

We did have a few people who were or had been suffering with heavy colds and unfortunately Rich Vidgen was one of them. Having missed the previous two weeks training due to sinusitis, we came to the decision not to compete in the individual 40+ yrs event. Richard together with wife Heather (who cycled in 4mins 45secs) and son Bertie (who at 10 years of age also did a PB swim of 3mins 20secs) picked up 4th place in the team event and Rich amazingly did a PB row of 7mins 3secs.

Back to the individuals
Our other individual competitors were Jimmy Rankin, who also had been out of training for a couple of weeks. I had persuaded Jim to do the event on the night. Colin Jackson (not the CJ!), Andrew Coleman, James Smith (who had my pick for best individual event performance with a massive PB of 6mins 27secs for the row in the team event) and Phil McConnell who did a PB swim of 2mins 58secs and finished with a sub 7min row, setting the fastest time of 14mins 46secs before Mr Rankin and my heat. All of the above took first right through to seventh place in the mens 16-40 competition category.

So who won the individual?
Well let's just say 'that Rankin guy is beginning to get on my nerves!!'
We had been having a bit of a laugh over the previous couple of weeks about the fact that I would have to be so far ahead of him on the swim because he would pull it all back on the rower (we are roughly the same on the bikes). I had arranged for us to both be in the same heat and proceeded to set about my swim like there was no bike and row involved. At least I now know I can split 61secs for the first 100m and I did manage to just about lap Lee. We finished with times of 2mins 16secs and 3mins 9secs respectively (that was actually a PB for Lee.)

Lee had reduced the deficit by just over 15 seconds by spinning at 120rpm on the bike and so to the rower. I had worked out in training that I could probably go around 7mins 15secs when absolutely knackered, but would that be enough?

I actually ended with a 7mins 18secs for a total time of 14mins 10secs and a well-earned second place I thought. Lee amazingly rowed a time of 6mins 31secs (just 7 secs outside his PB from fresh!!) I have to take my hat off to this guy who has performed brilliantly in all competitions this past year. Well done Lee.

And the team?
After all that, we still had the team events to perform. Andy had teamed up with James (6min 27secs row) and fiancée Gill and performed tremendously well to pick up 3rd place. With arms like jelly and legs like lead weights, I managed to almost repeat my individual swim time with a 2mins 18secs, Gill kindly kept us in contention with a terrific bike leg and somehow Lee managed to row a 6mins 32secs and we picked up 1st place with 13mins 39secs total.

So another good days competition for us and now on to the next one TOUGHGUY.
(I've not been able to persuade all of our lot to do Toughguy again next year.
'What's the matter with them? It can't be any worse than last January-----can it?)

Report by Ade Clift, Future Fitness