Mumbles middle distance triathlon race report - Craig Burrows
WhittleFit coached triathlete Craig Burrows raced the Mumbles middle distance triathon on Saturday and he had a rather good day, lets hear from the man himself what he thought about his race!
After a very intense year (by my standards) of training and racing I considered the rescheduled Mumbles Middle Distance event a bit of a hindrance as opposed to an opportunity to race. My motivation for this race was similar to that I share for a wedding fare... muted. I even mentioned to James (Grandfield) that I had never DNF'd before, this could be the first. The truth was that I was tired after the Cardiff Half Marathon the week prior and the weather was becoming increasingly Baltic by the day, my head was already in winter mode.
Race Morning: I awoke at 5am to a barrage of rain doing its best to drown out my whining alarm clock, I immediately asked Lauren if we 'had to go?' If we hadn’t planned to spend the weekend in West Wales after the race then I’m sure she would have said no. I trudged out of bed, chomped my oats, packed the car and we left. We were 10 minutes into our journey when I realised that I had forgotten all of my race nutrition, great. So after a U-turn and another 20 minutes we were back to the same spot. Arriving at a race with 20 minutes until transition closes is ill-advised, I was a right panicky-pants. To cap off an already stressful few hours I gleaned a few choice words from the race briefing and they were 'swim', 'shortened', 'too windy' and 'dangerous'. The swim was now 2 x 750m laps and they would 'assess' the safety of the swim after the first lap. Great, my confidence and enthusiasm was rocketing by the second.
Swim: 30:30
