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Lucy Bee
Posted: 23/05/2014
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Guest blog by Nikki Bartlett
A note from Lucy
My huge congratulations to Nikki for her recent success in winning the Scottish Olympic Distance Champs. Here she explains further……..
Last weekend, 18th May was time for the Scottish Olympic Distance Champs in Strathclyde Park, which is home of the Commonwealth Games 2014 for Triathlon.
Looking at the weather map it showed a sunny Britain and likely to be the hottest weekend of the year so far. Well, not so in Scotland, at least not Saturday. We even had our heating on for a little bit!
The aim of the race was obviously to race as hard as possible. I gave my body the delight of a two-day-taper, with around a 20 hour training week. Not my usual distance, but a warm up to the season to begin at Ironman UK 70.3 on 15th June.
When we arrived at Strathclyde Park, the course was set out and designed on some of the Commonwealth Games course. It was very cold and if I'm cold racing, I don't function. I would rather spend an extra minute in T1 and be able to race 'warm'.
At 8am the Women and Vets set off. It was a two lap course, which involved getting out and diving, before entering the second lap. MMM, ‘DIVE!’ . No one pre warned me of this before race day, put simply I cannot dive. I came out of the water 6th overall on the first lap, and the whole way around the first lap I questioned if I was going to do a running bomb, pencil jump, belly flop, or attempt this 'dive', which would probably result in a belly flop... So, which was the wise decision? Clearly a dive. Spectators were doing the 'ooo' and 'aaahhh' of successful dives. The reaction from the crowd when I attempted... an 'oooo'. Maybe I will practice these for future events.
I came out of the swim 1st female then onto the bike. This leg was 7 laps and actually the sun came out and it was beautiful!
The bike went smoothly on this busy course and then I came off with roughly 2 minute lead. The bike was undulating with a lot of technical points and certainly lots of gear changing.
Into the run, and oh boy my legs felt like jelly! After the first 2k my legs re-joined my body and my main aim today was to come away having ran a strong 10k off the bike. The girls in 2nd and 3rd place were running well and this made me push that much harder to sustain 1st place. I was super pleased to come away with a 37.47 10k time and the win.
It was a great day out and well organised event with a wonderful turn out of athletes.
Strathclyde will be a fantastic event to host the Triathlon at the Commonwealths, I can't wait to watch!
For me, onwards to Ironman UK 70.3 to kick off the 70.3 racing season.
As always, a massive thank you for your ongoing amazing support. A BIG THANK YOU to Lucy Bee for product sponsorship - now it's time to cook, bake and use away in my coffee and for my natural health cleanser too!
Nikki X
@NikkiBartlett1
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