How hard can a 12.5 mile, race-effort, relatively flat bike ride be? Erm…quite vomit-inducing hard actually. I was in a triathlon last weekend. I wasn’t doing the whole thing (fast swimming? Are you having a laugh?), I was one third of a relay team in the North West Triathlon, based in a nice park in Northwich.

Another Jason, a strong swimmer from work would be up first, then I’d take over and ride my easy-sounding 20k of flat road then Debbie would do the 5k run.

Joining us was a couple of dozen other folk from JMC of various levels of experience who were either taking part in other relay teams or would be tackling the whole triathlon on their own.

Stood in the transition area, bike waiting in a rack, I watched various almost-naked swimmers running to their team-mates until Other Jason arrived having just hammered out a 7:29 swim.

OK, 12 and a bit miles…pedal to the metal. I’ve no idea how to pace a 12.5 mile flat road ride so I got it a little bit wrong. At the 7.5 mile point I started to feel a bit dizzy. Backed off for a couple of minutes and eventually settled into what I consider a time trail pace and arrived at the second transition area and handed over to Deb, who promptly put in a brilliant run and claimed 3^rd place for Team Fantastic 🙂

The sun came out, the barbeque was lit and a burger, a laugh and a beer capped a brilliant day out with some ace people, all of which put in some serious effort.

I did the decent thing and rode the long way home (at a more civilised pace).