So this weekend was the first Olympic Standard Triathlon… and it went well… 3rd in my age category, 22nd female and one rather 
large grin on my face at the end! This was a good distance I realised for me… You get a bit more time to sink your teeth into each discipline, and I think I rather liked it!
Learning all the lessons from the last Sprint Triathlon. I knew preparation was key. I got all my stuff ready the night before, including any printed info I needed.
The race consisted of seven laps to do in the run. And after the confusion of the tape and cycle laps last time. I decided that I would ware seven thin hair bands on my left wrist and put them; one by one onto my right wrist from the start this time, rather than once the lap was completed… This should stop any confusion…
I went to bed that night nice and early knowing all I had to do in the morning was get dressed, eat porridge and drive to the venue.
It was a lovely morning. I was meant to be quite overcast but the sun was out and by the time I got to the venue it was pretty warm. At the registration point I was informed that it was a non wetsuit swim as the water surface temperature was 22 degrees. Lake 62 like all the lakes in the Cotswold Water park are not too deep so I guessed that actually that would be ok… However, there seemed to be a lot of panicked faces surrounding me saying I’ve never swum without a wetsuit… Nor have I, I suppose in open water, but, hey hoo I’ve no choice now… And I have to say I really enjoyed it apart from getting totally tangled in the weeds that they had also warned us about.
I also managed to forget to set my watch at the beginning of the swim (again), but this time remembered only about 10m in, so that
was an improvement! Also hot having to fight your way out of a wetsuit was also a bonus in T1 (Transition 1). My cycling shoes didn’t break this time so that saved me time. And it was a nice flat course so that was fun.
My run went very well too, although I had to stop for a quick pee on my second lap which cost me a few mins! If I hadn’t done that I’d
have run the 10K under an hour… Oh well, such is life!
So all in all I had great fun. Met a really nice female competitor who was in my age group and came 2nd. We had a great laugh before and caught up at the end to watch the medals being given to the competitors who came 1st, 2nd and 3rd positions. Their times were amazing – the 1st female completed it in 02:25:54, I came in 03:04:48… I was pleased with that… wish I hadn’t had to go for that pee though!