Race report from the New Mills Tri

See below an intriguing coke & mars bar fuelled race report from Gareth who competed in the New Mills tri (sprint alleged) last sunday .......

error # 1 peat district flat , peak district hills ++ - read the location properly
error #2 print race route in COLOUR so you can see the climb is >5% for more than 2 miles of the course
error #3 read the scale on the route graph and dont just think looks flat
error #4 dont go to a conference ,drink loads of beer smoke tabs and sleep little then drive for hours ( obviously not within 24hrs of drinking! ) and have to entertain kids grandparents etc go to bed late get up at 5 and expect to be fresh as a daisy when you race
error #5 sat nav very good but wont tell you that ribble bikes are closed for refurb and you are going to an industrial estate in the back of beyond which has no fancy wheels to buy anyway , 30min drive from mums and i was at the top of a valley , drove down it to find the pool that the race was based in . 400 m swim only 3 in the lane and out second in 9 mins ish .200+ m run to transition and then its off on the bike . Nice and flat for 220m then a 2k climb (with the benefit of 2 sets of traffic lights on the climb ) topped the climb and the lights went red so it was pause time . Then a flat section i think but really could not get my legs to go round , bit of speed and 2 or 3 people scalped on a dual carrigeway ,quick right around a roundabout and another hill presented itself . The man in the ironman T told me 2 hills on the course so i set off up this one -not bad at all - passing folk and thinking all was well . Then i went right under a bridge and the road went up .. and up and i ran out of gears .This was when i saw thin fit folk pushing their bikes . So 10 mins later (i think) i crested the climb to find another one -AHH ! Got over this and another athelite passed me and i chased him for the rest of the bike all 21.1k of it .worst bike this year at 46mins but I thought nice flat run to finish . T2 flew past the guy who i had been chasing and a couple of others (not for long but thats always the case ) and off on the run . A lovely day shaded trail flat course all factors which make me smile BUT... i ran for 20 mins overtaken by 2 folk and still not at the turn did not know what was happening cos my legs were going at full gas for me and felt good . got home just - first time i have hit the wall(thats the running term is it not?) in a sprint race and my knees and calf muscles felt like i had run 10k . Turns out that the guy who set up the turn on the run course sort of forgot to check his map and it was a bit longer than 5k . I managed 41.33 and the fastest runner has just under 30 mins so recon 7+k . This would have been fine if i new it at the onset as i would have drank/eaten on the bike but usually for <90 mins at my "performance" level i dont need it and this left me in a bit of metabolic chaos .Luckily the race bag had a thing called a goodness shake in it and water which supplemented with a mars bar and some coke had me on an even keel for the journey home . Didnt come last but not happy with time of just less than 1hr 40 i would recomend this race to you all if you fancy something with some good hills and a flat and fast run , but would say a road bike with tri bars is way more sensible than a tt bike and if you weigh <100k it would help . also compression socks work very well for recovery and stella/curry lead to opimal muscle functional recovery ( but a bit of a sore head )