On 1 September I completed my 3rd standard distance triathlon, Brighton & Hove Triathlon (referral link) at the best possible location, good beach weather, completely flat course by a quality organiser.

Motivation

I’d like to do a triathlon with open sea swim, flat bike and flat run, as I believe this combination can get me the best result. Brighton & Hove Triathlon perfectly fits all three criteria, and I registered as soon as the registration opened last year at the discounted price. Another big plus of this race is the ease of train access, where I can travel down on an early morning train from London on race day (the first train from London on Sunday arrives at Brighton at 05:41), without needing accommodation, and the train fare is cheap as well (just £11.65 day return between West Hampstead Stations and Brighton with a suitable railcard, valid via all three reasonable routes across London including City Thameslink, Victoria and Kensington Olympia).

Training

I didn’t do any triathlon-specific training as it is not my main sport.

As a marathon swimmer I still had swim training going on, but it was not going well. I usually swam 4 times per week totalling about 11 km, with 2 club training session every week during the summer.

I still didn’t do any bike training, but starting from mid-July (when my annual Travelcard expired) I started bike commuting on the days I went to the pool after work (10 km from home to work, 6 km from work to the pool, and 2 km back home bringing the bike onto the train to get through the hill in a tunnel, 18 km in total) for 1 to 2 days per week, with other relatively short weekend rides to access the rail network as well.

I didn’t have any run training, but I ran a lot of park / urban / street orienteering races throughout the season (once or twice per week, totalling about 12 to 15 km).

Travel

The organiser told us to register on Saturday afternoon if possible. However, for me it was a four-hour round trip to Brighton, with the weather too windy to swim on Saturday, I decided against going down.

My start time was 10:40 but the transition closed at 09:25, so I had to go down early on race day to do the registration and prepare my stuff for transition.

Under normal circumstances I always travel on Thameslink from West Hampstead across Central London to go to Brighton, with the West London Line from Kensal Rise or Willesden Junction being the alternative when it is out of action, but they are not available so early Sunday morning so the only viable way for me to get there is to cycle all the way down the A5 to Victoria (9 km downhill) and get a Southern train, as bikes are not allowed on the Jubilee and Victoria lines through Central London.

I travelled on the 06:32 train from London Victoria, due to arrive Brighton at 08:04. Despite so early on Sunday morning, the train ended up full and standing after it picked up passengers at the intermediate stations, with a large number of bikes (there are officially only 2 bike spaces per 4 carriages on a Southern Class 377 unit, which was clearly inadequate) and large amount of luggage as well which emptied out when the train arrived at the airport. Therefore I question if the Gatwick Express is a waste of resources because one departed at 06:30 which ran non-stop to the airport, without the ability to pick up passengers at Clapham Junction and East Croydon.

Preparation

I had a pack of 4 cheese rolls, and also two Hong Kong style buns from the previous evening’s celebration dinner with Ingrid and Eliza for their English Channel success, as breakfast. I put a bottle of 900 mL energy drink in the transition, intending to be used at T2. As the weather was hot, and the sea temperature at 19 to 20°C, I didn’t use a wetsuit in the race.

The swim

The swim course was supposed to be 1500 m, in a trapezium with a loop in between.

It was the 29th of the 7th lunar month, so it was a spring tide, and the high tide was at 11:21. The slack at Brighton is at about 2 hours before the high and low tides, and our start time was 10:40 so the tide would have already changed to run from east to west, which meant we would swim against a strong spring tide in the swim course.

The start was a beach start. At high tide, it was immediately swimmable (duck dive was possible) right at the edge of the water, unlike Torquay where I did my last race. It was the most violent start I had encountered with everyone swimming on top of everyone, and of course my goggle filled with water as a result so I had to adjust it after I passed through the violent part.

It didn’t take long to pass the first buoy, but it felt so long to get to the top of the trapezium, during the process I passed a lot of people. After turning at the top I could no longer see other swimmers in my wave or draft anyone.

The tide was so strong that, when I was approaching the turn buoy at the bottom of the trapezium, my watch said 600 m and 17 minutes, and I really felt the strength of the tide when I turned for the leg with the tide.

As time went on, the tide became stronger and stronger, and it was all the way against the tide after turning again to the swim exit. I also suspected that the swim distance was much longer than the standard as well, and my half-hour swim would end up 50 minutes fighting against the tide. My swim time ended up to be 53 minutes and 38 seconds, the 144th out of 295 finishers in Open. My watch registered 2.02 km for the swim leg with visible drift between the laps.

As the swim was much longer than expected, I consumed some sport drink at T1 to avoid running out of energy during the bike. Also I discovered that I reversed my number bib so I had to change it back. When I got to the T1, most of the bikes were still on the rack, which should be a good thing as it was likely that I gained an advantage in the swim, magnified by the tide.

The bike

The bike course was on the seafront road, a simple out and back course, 8 laps of 5 km with 2 turns at the end. It was completely flat. The wind was about 15 km/h northeasterly. In the initial laps, I kept about 30 km/h with the wind and 25 km/h against the wind, with 11 minutes per lap, dropping to 12 minutes in the final laps.

I made a mistake again on the bike. I forgot to remove the locks from the bike before the race, which added unnecessary weight during races (I did remove the phone stand and the lights – the bike is my commuting bike which I installed two locks, a kickstand (not removable), front and back lights, and a phone holder), and I only discovered that in the second lap.

My bike time was 1:30:12, 252nd out of 295 finishers in Open, with my watch registering 39.63 km. I consumed a lot of sports drink in T2. Unfortunately, a lot of bikes were already there when I was back in the transition, which meant that I didn’t actually got much advantage from the swim.

The run

The run course was 4 laps of 2.5 km, again, completely flat, but with a few turns in each lap though the event centre. It was so hot that my run performance was definitely affected, and I definitely had a tough time. During the first two laps my left leg wanted to cramp but I avoided it. My running speed got slower and slower each lap, starting at 11.7 km/h, gradually dropping below 11, and I couldn’t even keep 10 during the latter part of the second lap and the third lap, however I still kept running and refrained from walking. My running time was 0:54:46, 131st out of 295 finishers in Open, with my watch registering 9.52 km.

The finish

My final result was 3:26:07. Unfortunately even with a magnified swim portion, I still couldn’t reach the median in the field. My ranking was 165th out of 295 finishers in Open, and 39th out of 74 in the O30-34 age group, although the overall ranking was not a fair comparison due to the difference in start times, and the fact that the elites started an hour before us meant they didn’t encounter a strong opposing tide on the swim course.

Although my result was not great, my ranking was definitely better than my previous triathlons, and I no longer came last on the bike in the Open category.

I went back to the sea for a while to cool down as it was so hot that I couldn’t stand under the sun anymore. I was still so fat that the weight gained last year after I reset my training for the Channel was still here, like having a built in wetsuit in my body, so I floated naturally, totally relaxed on the sea like lying on a bed, but that also caused me poor performance and overheating during the run.

I originally planned to do some swim training after the race and having lunch, but because the swim portion was so tough today, I decided it was enough today after the cool down, and I went home directly on a Thameslink train after the lunch.

Conclusion

This was a good race and I would definitely do it again. However, the tide made the results incomparable between waves, or between different years, so I might need to use another race to judge and compare my performance instead, probably one at Dorney Lake.