Wensleydale Triathlon, 12 August 2007 (1.8km/67km/20km)

[Rich] My brother Matt and I had signed up for the Wensleydale triathlon back in April. With a number of events to concentrate on beforehand, I’d not really given the race much thought – until I decided to look over the course details with just two weeks to go. Arghhh! I suddenly realised what I’d let myself in for. The cycling profile looked like the sharpened teeth of a particularly malicious shark. It was all back-breaking 25% hills and outrageously steep descents – with no chance for recuperation. Preceding the 67km grind on the bike was a potentially ice-cold 1.8km lake swim, while the final leg was a 20km fell run up and down the area’s highest peak, Great Shunner Fell (716m). In a last gasp effort to adapt my training to the extremes of the course, I searched out the few hills in my local area (Paris, France) and tackled them in a stupidly big gear. In the end, I think I knackered myself out more than anything else.

The night before the race, it rained. And then it rained some more. My biggest fear was that fresh water would drain down from the hills and cause a serious drop in temperature at Semer Water. I’m not good in cold water. Doubling up swim hats and zipping my wetsuit up tight, I tiptoed cautiously into the water. Oooohhh, it was freez… hang on a minute, I still had feeling in my feet. In fact, it was almost a pleasant temperature, not too cold at all. Heck, the lake at Dijon Triathlon in France was colder than this.

Semer Water: shallow, surprisingly warm, and full of feet-unfriendly rocks

Semer Water is pretty shallow around its edges, so we had to wade in a bit to reach the start point. The swim itself was two laps around a couple of buoys that had been strategically placed in the deeper part of the lake. As usual, I fluffed the start. Swimming is my weak point in triathlon, and I always get too nervous. Even though there were only 82 swimmers, I still managed to get whacked a couple of times at the beginning, notably by my own brother! After a few minutes, though, I settled down to a steady rhythm, and despite going off-course a number of times (the muddy water offered zero visibility), the rest of the swim went… swimmingly.

There’s a real art to exiting Semer Water. At the shore, the muddy bottom gives way to jagged rocks and pebbles. Just keeping upright requires both delicate tiptoes over the stones and flailing arms to maintain your balance. From afar, our attempts to regain land must have looked like some sort of demented gymnastics routine. I opted for swimming till the very last moment, by which time my legs and hands were scraping the bottom, before climbing onto my feet and limbering to the shore.

Matt delicately exits Semer Water (l) Rich fumbles to find his zip (centre) And finally finds it to exit T1 (r)

I’ve never been a speed merchant in transitions, and by the time I’d mounted the bike I was already over ten minutes behind the top swimmer. Still, mid-field (45th) is about right for me after T1. As promised in the promotional blurb, the bike leg kicked off with an horrific, morale-busting 1 in 4 hill. And, at only a few hundreds metres long, this was just a mere taste of what was to come.

Even though the rain had stopped, the roads were still wet. This inevitably made the course’s many steep, often narrow descents extremely dangerous. The very first downhill section, just 500m in, was perhaps the worst. I’d already felt my back wheel slide from under me when I glimpsed a figure stopped by the side of the road. It was Matt – and he had come off. I pulled over to see if he was alright. He was understandably shaken by being propelled over his handlebars (albeit at low velocity), but the physical damage seemed to be restricted to a few scrapes and grazes. That said, he would have an impressively inflated sprained wrist later that evening. In the three or four minutes Matt had been waiting there, he’d seen another two competitors fall. Caution was clearly of the essence on the descents, and we resumed the plummet into Bainbridge at an astoundingly sensible speed. Unsurprisingly, Matt was even more prudent than me, and I soon left him behind.

The first significant hill was a vicious bastard. According to the course description, the climb of Askrigg Common includes two sections at 25%, and another two at 20%. I’m not sure how you define a ‘section’, but the whole four kilometres seemed unfeasibly steep to me. The bottom in particular was an out-of-the-saddle grind which finally levelled out (relatively) onto open, rugged moorland at the top. I was using Matt’s old Trek bike, and, man, was I happy he had had the gearing changed for the occasion. At least my 39x32 allowed me to return to a seated position on the all-too-rare portions below 20%. Near the top, I made a mental note to always sit down when cycling over wet cattle grids: I’d almost lost the bike in a sideways skid while pedalling out-of-the-saddle over the slippery metal grating. By now, I was starting to gain confidence on the bike: on the hill, I’d managed to pass some of the stronger swimmers who had started ahead of me. Hilly bike courses always suit me – and, let’s face it, they don’t come much hillier than this.

Rich tackles that classic Wensleydale combination: steep hills and stubborn sheep

I took the very hazardous descent towards Muker with extreme caution, especially after seeing another two or three participants stopped by the roadside – presumably after falling or puncturing. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had suffered an encounter with one of the unpredictably nervous sheep grazing by the roadside: I saw one guy narrowly miss a sheep-on collision after the beast suddenly decided to lurch out in front of him. Having safely negotiated the twists and turns of the Askrigg Common descent, it was on to the next uphill challenge: the Buttertubs pass, which turned out to be a whole lot simpler. Despite some steep passages (especially near the top), Buttertubs offered a fair few moments of respite – and some stunning views.

The third major climb reared its (very) ugly head at around 35kms. This narrow, gravely road to Garsdale Station proved to be the most consistently steep hill of the race. Ahead of me, I could see a string of cyclists zigzagging their way painfully up the slope. Over the four kilometres of leg-wrecking ascent, I gradually (VERY gradually) managed to pick up a good number of them. From here, there was another ultra-high gradient plunge (the organizers sure mean it when they post ‘Steep Descent’ signs) down to the Lea Yeat T-junction. A pleasant river-side road led to another, thankfully shorter, back-breaking climb, before I hit the B6255 – and the first descent that could confidently be negotiated at a half-decent speed (over 50kph).

Rich makes steady progress on the bike (l) while Matt struggles with just one working hand (r)

As we entered Hawes, I thought I’d finished the bike leg. But, no: the route tantalisingly came within a few hundred of metres of the transition before sending us out on another 5km loop over a couple of extra steep bumps. Still, after 2hours 40 on the bike (25th best time), I finally came to T2, which was a separate location from the initial transition at Semer Water. Cycling hat and shoes came off; and on came socks, running shoes and backpack with water, food, whistle and waterproof (all obligatory equipment for the fell run).

As I left the transition area, I noticed an athlete being stretchered into a parked ambulance. A quick glance assured me the unfortunate patient wasn’t Matt, and so I sprinted off along the road towards Great Shunner Fell. Back pain. That’s the first thing I noticed on the run. Not using my own bike may have saved me the major hassle of transporting my own bike by plane, but it had inevitably left me with aches and pains that became even more noticeable on the run. I tried to stretch my back on the move as I plodded back along the road I’d just cycled (still no sign of Matt), and then turned left onto a field towards the Pennine Way.

On this lower, flatter stretch of the course, I started at a fast rhythm and, despite the multiple narrow swing gates and styles, managed to overtake four or five fellow triathletes. Once through the lower fields, the rocky track kicked up sharply, and I slowed down significantly. So much so that I was convinced I would soon be passed by the honed fell runners I had just overtaken. But no, glancing back, I realized I was still gaining on them – even if much less convincingly than beforehand. Just three kilometres in (all distances courtesy of my Garmin GPS watch; there were no mile markers on the course), I began to think I’d made a serious mistake setting off so fast: the gradient went way up, leaving me out of breath and, briefly, resigned to power walking rather than actual running. Fortunately, this steep section didn’t last long, and I was soon able to catch my breath and pick up to running pace anew.

Shortly after, the path narrowed and degraded to a grassy track among larger rocks, with water and bogs ever more a feature as I gained in altitude. Just five kilometres into my run, I was met by the race leader pelting down the mountain, his victory well and truly sealed on this out-and-back course. He was only eight kilometres ahead of me, I figured – not too bad. Plus, it was a good while till I was passed by the second and third guys, both of whom were starting fresh as part of a relay team. In other words, I was doing OK.

I continued to count the runners passing me in the opposite direction to see roughly where I stood in the overall standings. I’d seen around 20 guys by the time I hit the top – which meant I was heading for a pretty chuffing top 25 place. It was certainly more uplifting to count those going down than to search for any participants in front of me. By this point, we were well and truly spread out, although I eventually managed to pick up another two guys on the upper slopes. Up here, it felt like a fell run as I imagined fell runs should be. A veil of mist had reduced visibility to a few tens of metres, and, had I not been running up a big mountain, I would have felt very cold indeed. In the final uphill kilometres, there were a couple of steep portions (one of which I was again forced to power-walk), but generally it was possible to maintain running pace, not least thanks to the generous sections of paving stones laid down for walkers.

At the summit, I misunderstood the marshal’s instructions to touch the mountaintop wall, and began to run around it. I felt vaguely guilty not accepting his outstretched water bottle (the poor bugger must have hiked up the mountain with over a hundred bottles!), but I still had plenty of liquid left in my camelback. From here, it was all down.

As I began the romp downhill, I passed a guy who was still on his way up – but at a noticeably high velocity. I’d have to watch he didn’t pass me. Still, I soon had a target of my own, as I spotted another participant not too far in front. On the bike, I’m not a great descender: I value my health (and bones) too much to recklessly fling myself at speed down the hills. So I surprised myself by veritably hurtling down the mountainside in what was essentially my first stab at fell running. Great fun it was too!

Rich is so happy to see the finish (l) ...that he sprints (centre) Matt in fell-running mode (r)

As I passed ever more runners making their way up, I began to conclude that Matt had abandoned. But then, I finally glimpsed a guy approaching me who was of about the right build and dressed in the right colour. It was Matt – over 8km behind me. We exchanged a few words, during which I heard enough to understand that his hand was causing him considerable grief. Personally, I was becoming gripped by a sensation of total fatigue: I suddenly just wanted to lie down and fall asleep. I also got a sudden, if thankfully brief, cramp spasm on the inside of my upper thighs. Typically, it was at this point that the speedy guy from behind suddenly whizzed past me. I didn’t even attempt to follow. As it turned out, he recorded the fastest fell run of the day, so I was far from disgraced. Soon after being overtaken, I cheered myself up by passing my own marker man, a chap from Ipswich triathlon. As with everyone I passed on the run (in both directions), we exchanged a few words of mutual encouragement.

In the final few kilometres, I managed to pick up the pace again, drawing a fair few stares of disbelief from casual Sunday hikers. But there were no other competitors to be seen up ahead, and I eventually finished, thoroughly knackered, in a time of 5hrs 1min 22secs for a rather pleasing 21st overall – or 16th not including relay teams. I’d also recorded the 16th fastest fell run.