While I spend a good deal of time riding indoors on my TT bike in the winter I haven’t raced on it in quite some time. Last year when my sister was in town she, her husband and my wife teamed up for the Olympic distance triathlon relay. This year I was swapped onto the team in place of my wife. It was fun to have an opportunity for a race effort.

It was a bit strange riding the bike leg of a triathlon. You need to rack your bike in transition and prior to the start transition is closed. It makes total sense as you can’t have folks milling about when athletes exit the swim and are trying to move through transition quickly. It does mean though that any sort of warm up on the bike doesn’t really happen. And in my case not really any warm up at all. As a former triathlete I would rack my bike, do a short run and head to the water for a swim warm up. The engine would be up to temperature onto the bike as the preceding swim got things moving. Not so today.

It took a bit to get into the flow of the ride. The early Ks are pretty lumpy and I was feeling not warming up. I rode well but my perception was it was difficult. After 7K I was able to settle into a strong rhythm and felt great. I hit the turn around in 36 minutes and was pleased, I was moving well.

It was a gentle downhill for nearly 5K leading to the turn around. This means it will be a gentle uphill for the 5K leading away from the turn around. Here I suffered. I don’t often ride this road in this direction. It was a bit of a slog, just steep enough to really notice but not steep enough to be climbing. It was this 5K where I gave away some time as I finished with a 78 minute clocking. Next time I will need to be prepared to push hard following the turn around.

Despite the slower 2nd half I was pleased with my ride. The team won the relay with the 2nd fastest swim and bike segments and the fastest run. All told it was a great day.