Lurgie-ville

It's been a tough couple of weeks here as a big bout of the lurgie kicked in immediately after Burnham on Sea Tri (before it if I'm honest). The next two weeks training were very hit and miss, anything that required any effort was normally halted by a bout of coughing that was well in excess of my normal seemingly incurable problem. I managed to keep plugging along but my target of 45hrs this month is in tatters and I now need a good solid weekend if I've a chance of hitting 35hrs. At least it was only a cold/cough and not an injury so I can look on the bright side.
Last Saturday was the NDTC Aquathlon at Croyde Beach, a race that Shelly organises. It's supposed to be a 1k/7.5k swim/run event, but the distances are very flexible. On the swim section we're reliant on what the local RNLI guesstimate is 1k, this year I think it was slightly long but not much so the boys did a good job with their bouy positioning. The run is always likely to be short though. Croyde Bay has a very small area available for running and when I measured the course out 3 years ago it was low tide and I used every available inch of beach. The more the tide comes in the shorter the run course becomes but our human turn points do a fine job of moving along with the tide. This years run course I expect was barely 6k.
Normally I just mess about at the race, starting at the back and jogging around the run course chatting to people, this year I decided to give it some stick though.
Ok, I got beat! Truth be known I got hammered, but when someone turns up that swims like a fish on a long swim/short run course it was always going to happen.
I charged out into the sea (for my first OW swim of the year) and worked hard from the start.

Three of us exited the water together, we were in 2nd, 3rd and 4th places. The leader was already 3mins into his run!!!!! I'd worked so hard in the swim that I couldn't stand up in T1 and ended up having to sit down on my wetsuit to put my trainers on losing me time and another place in the field.

Once out onto the run though I put the hammer down a little and soon worked my way up to 2nd place. I had no idea where the leader was but having clubmates at every marshalling point I soon found out that the chances of me catching him were next to none..........

Still, it was a good workout, I managed to post the days fastest run and still had the legs to run 6 miles home afterwards

There have been conversations regarding me doing a local off road marathon this weekend. I'll never say never until it's simply too late, but as it stands then it won't be happening. We'll see.