What a team!! - National Club Relay Championships

Better late than never with my blog posts, hey. Travelling immediately after an event really takes up any free time to get the blogs up. I will get there in the end I'm sure and acknowledge that's its old news by the time I get round to it, but its all for the record.

So, National Club Relay Championships in Nottingham. Basically the format is a team of 4 that all swim then bike and finally run. The distances are more manageable than a sprint with a 500m swim, 15k bike and 5k run.

I was fortunate to place in a team that consisted of Chris Ritchie, Tom Stead and Richard Hancock. These boys are the sprint kings of the club and we thought we had a got chance to compete with the faster teams racing Saturday afternoon in the open race.

Up nice and early, Kye and I made our way to meet with the other 36 Nice Tri members competing in the relays. We travelled up in convoy and made our way to the Nice Tri camp set up on the far side on the lake. What a set up; 2 tents and a BBQ cooking up bacon and egg rolls for breakie. This was followed up by burgers and hot dogs for lunch, just in time for our race to start at 13:45.

 
Simon Boothby did a fantastic job cooking for the day with the great assistance of his wife Lucy and side kick Dan Ridley, ensuring we were all well feed. In addition to this, there were superb cakes on offer that were baked by Katie and Michaela Ridley to keep our sugar levels up. To top all this off, Emma Ritchie baked a Sponge cake in the colours and shape of a tri suit which looked amazing. The efforts of all the members during events like this really make me appreciate what a great club I am able to be part off.

Fuelled to the max we made our way to the swim start. Chris the fish went first and put us in a great position (top 5) from the start. Handing the band to Tom, another great swimmer, Tom was able to make his way to the front and sit on the 2 lead swimmers to put us into 3rd on the next hand over. Next was Richard; a swimmer like me, we just needed to put in a solid performance to stay at the sharp end of the race. Fortunately we both did and sent Chris out on the bike in 7th.

The hardest part of the race was now over and being 4 strong cyclist this is where we knew we had to put in the hard work to create an advantage if we could. Chris worked hard and brought us up to first place, from that point on we kept gaining time until we were leading by 6 minutes going into the run.

Chris, Tom and Richard absolutely buried themselves around the 5k loop to send me out on the run with some 8 mins ahead of 2nd place. Having such a great lead it was hard not having somebody to chase but I did my best off my current run fitness to cross the line to take the win for the team; nearly 8 minutes ahead of 2nd. The effort we put in for each other was incredible and felt very honoured to be part of this team.

 
The rest of the podium for the open race was taken by another Nice Tri Team and the other 8 Nice Tri teams were not too far behind.
 
Having 10 teams entered we were the most represented club of the day, which just shows again the magnitude of how great our club is.