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Bath Endurance Weekend

I spent this weekend in Trowbridge taking part in the Bath Endurance Weekend organised by Hot Chilli Triathlon club (I think they have a great name) I did this last year too but I found the quarry water too cold and I only managed to do 1 lap but this time it was a lovely 12 degrees and I managed 2 laps, hurrah. I was very pleased with that. I'm still swimming the entire distance breaststroke, which is fairly slow but I made it and at some point I'll get round to learning to crawl.

So I had to get up at 5 again, which I could tell was too early because radio 4 was playing Farming Today'. I made the two laps in 46mins even tho' my leg kept threatening to cramp on me during the last 500m or so. My Garmin watch completely failed to calculate my distance, it decided I'd only managed 8m.

Walking back up the hill after the swim I realised that it had been hard work, after the first 500m I felt like I could pretty much carry on forever. My brain did try and panic me when I was at the furthest point away from the shore with its silly worry about something going wrong but I didn't listen to it and the safety canoeists looked pretty competent anyway.

I made it back to the car and I had about 3 hours before I started the bike distance so I ate my yummy rhubarb and ginger jam sandwiches and all the other food I had, drank all the drink and managed to fall asleep for 40mins. 

 The bike was fun and exhausting, I was worn out after 30k, my chain didn't fall off so that was good and I managed to overtake a few people. After that I went home to rest.

The next morning I headed back to do the 10k, +Shaney Orrowe and +Greg Wilson came too and both of them beat me again! The run was hard work, I already ached everywhere from Saturday but the weather was glorious so that helped motivate me onwards. 

I had a brilliant time and I hope they continue organising this event.

Westonbirt sprint triathlon 2014

I really love racing at Westonbirt, the scenery is beautiful and I got lucky again with the weather during my race. I did this race last year too. This year I marginally improved by 1min :) it would have been more but I managed to dither longer in transition this time. Importantly I beat my boss by 10mins and Kate, Alex and little Edward turned up at the end to say hi. This race was organised by DB Max. s 400m, b 24km, r 5km. Completed in 1hr 48m 9secs

City of Bath Triathlon

Yay, I got to finally do this race again. This was my first ever triathlon 2 years ago and there were quite a few people doing it as their first one this year too. It wasn't quite the same, as the swim was only 400m rather than 750m. The bike route seemed very similar to how I remembered it, very hilly and the run seemed similar but didn't end on the race track this time.

It was still impossible to get out at the end of the pool, this time I swam to the side and got out there instead.

swim: 400m bike: 23k, run 5k

Organised by DBMax and Bath Amphibians

Results

Rhubarb Jam

I was running out of jam and there was lots of new rhubarb growing in the garden and some of last year's frozen in the freezer.

I made Ginger and Rhubarb jam, it isn't as gingery as I'd like but it's still yummy. 

 

Dragon Patch

Another patch for a pair of trousers, this time it was on stretchy fabric. I need to do some playing around with the tension on my machine as the first attempt didn't work at all and all the bobbin thread was pulled into the front. I only tricked it into working by putting the same colour bobbin thread as top thread.

I used the Gilded Heraldry - Dragon design and made it slightly smaller so it would fit on Gabe's trousers.

Here's the finished result:

Big T Sprint

Bank holiday Monday and it's the first triathlon of the year :) I was a little nervous but felt fine as soon as I started swimming.

Organised by Hot Chilli Tri Club

swim: 400m, bike: 25k, run 5k

A mostly flat course which was a nice surprise, so unlike the Bath Triathlon I'll be doing later this month.

No medal for this one, but I did get an oversized T-shirt, yay! Finished in about 2hours 6mins.