That glorious view my friends is an aerial shot of Killiney beach on the southside of Dublin, with Bray (more on that later) and the Sugarloaf ‘mountain’ in the background. This year I have elected to vary things by way of my training. Seven years into my triathlon journey, I feel i need to more than just regular training sessions and so like last year I have signed up with Leinster Open Sea, to swim purely swimming races. These are novel for me as a triathlete given once the swim is over, the race is run so to speak, theres no breathless running to transition to grab my bike. Its simply a swim. Now you might recall that I swam one Leinster Open Swim last year and promptly won it… well, I say ‘won’, technically I crossed the finish line first yes, but I was the only one wearing a westsuit while all the other swimmers weere swimming in togs. These races are also handicapped races to enable anyone to win the race, so my 4 minute handicap at the time was clearly not enough given I ws wearing a wetsuit. This time round things would be different as I was given a 12 minute handicap. So I would be starting my swim a full 12 minutes after the first swimmers took to the water. The great thing about these swim only races, is I am swimming against proper swimmers and thus given my lowly pedigree in the water there are zero exptectations of me.
And boy did I deliver on the no expectations front this time !! You see the moment the men entered the water for their race conditions turned much choppier than they had been for the womens race. In fact they were getting so choppy I started to have second thoughts about this race, a race that would be 1700 metres in total. However I was determined to face my fear of swimming in more turbulent waters, especially seeing as there were marshalls and kayakers keeping an eye on us as we made our way around, The waters in Killiney have a stronger current than in Seapoint where I usually swim, and it was for this reason I was wary of swmming to the furthest buoy about 650 m away from the swim entry position. But as I made my way slowly I got more and more confidence and before too log i was rounding the furthermost buoy. The challenge now was to swim parallel close to the beach all the way back. It was at this point that I felt like I was getting nowhere fast, I was being thrown from side to side, and ffinding it difficult to get into a rhythm and sight when I trued to see where I was going. Everytime I looked up to get my bearings The start line seemed the same distance away, but it couldnt be as I was making some progress when I looked right towards the beach. I simple thrashed away over and over again to the point where I was almost in a trance, it was a bit bizarre. Eventually the start / finish line came into view and I hauled myself out of the water after 40 minutes and over 1700m of swimming. One of the marshalls said to me that my handicap had been too high, as I came in 3rd last which to be honest didnt bother me. I felt my greatest achievement was just sticking it out and getting through my fear of rougher waters than Im used to.
A few days later I found myself on another beach, this time Bray beach even further south of Dublin again. This time for an aquathlon or aquathon, which involves a swim followed by a run. I had actually done this one before back in 2017 when I first entered the sport of triathlon. I had perfrmed quite well at the time getting 29th I recall. The sting in the tail of that race was the fact it left me with a stress injury in my shin because of the downhill part of the run. It was for this reason that I hadnt retirned since 2017, but thsi year I thought why not give it another go.
Thankfully there were a few from my club there too so i had some familiar faces to share the occasion with. The race involved a 750 m swim parallel to the beach, followed by a 5 km run which involved running along the seafront up Bray head hill to the car park and down to the pavillion twice. The swim was ok, the usual frenetic mass of bodies that you get in a mass swim start. The buoys werent easily visible so for much of the swim I just swam following others and not really knowing my direction, but it was ok in the end. Out of the water we got and off came the wetsuit and it was off on the run. Now for the seafront section of the run, its obviously very flat, so the key is to try to make up some time here, because you’re going to lose time running up Bray head, which as some points must be 10% gradient. I found myself behind two older runners who were runninga decent pace, so i stuck with them. I passed a couple but the third guy proved to be a bit harder to pass. It was in fact not until the second lap that i managed to pass him. The secret with passing is to do it convincingly as it prevents that person latching onto you as you pass. That strategy worked even though it was very tough, especially seeing as climbing the hill the second time had be completely gassed and almost at a crawl. Each time running down that hill I was careful not to pound the ground as I did so, and when i was back on flat terrain again I upped my speed. In the end, I crossed the line in 25th, although my run time was slower but Im not sure of the distance was exactly the same. It was great to get out there all the same, plus the sun shone which was fab.
mathieunorry 