Month: May 2016

The Slateman Full Triathlon

Short Version

1k Swim: 23:51

51k Bike: 2:07:37

11k Run: 1:13:32

Total: 3:49:57

Long Version

I rarely write race reports but this is the longest event I have done in my dilettante triathlon career so thought I would share. Summary: very cold swim, poor bike and good run.

Last year, I bought an entry to the Slateman sprint race from a team-mate who had originally signed up for the Savage (combined sprint on Saturday and full distance on Sunday). Last year, I drove there and back, totalling about 12 hours in the car and all for less than 2 hours of racing. I promised myself I would not do that again. It did not form part of my plans for 2016. Until, that is, a weekday afternoon when it both became clear that I was unlikely to be able to make Crystal Palace and, almost simultaneously, I got a promotional email from Always Aim High Events. So, a little whimsically and spontaneously, I signed up for the full distance (1k+51k+11k) and booked the train.

I arrived on Saturday evening in actually sunny Llanberis just in time to register. Big supper, a couple of glasses of red wine and it was time for bed. As always, I slept badly before the race and was reading my book between 0300 and 0400. It is the same every time. Coffee, no coffee, alcohol, no alcohol, and other things: all make no difference.

The weather forecasts in the run-up were rather a tease. One day, sunny, next day, rain and so on. It reminded me of that good rule of thumb for the west of our wonderful country, “if you can see the mountains, it is going to rain soon. If you can’t see the mountains, it’s raining already”. And, on Sunday morning, you could not see the mountains. In fact, what started as light rain on the short spin to transition became a monsoon. Everyone and everything was soaked. Towels leached peat blotches, shoes were either left upside down to stop them filling with water or they housed puddles, folks’ plastic transition boxes became mini-paddling pools. It was probably the rain that led one competitor to attach the wrong shoes to their pedals: so right shoe on left pedal and t’other way around; as the commentator gleefully announced.

A little unfortunately, mine was the last swim wave at 1015 (something to do with 50+) but we had to be out of transition by 0915: an hour, therefore, in the freezing rain. My hands and feet developed a blue tinge but there were other competitors who were just blue, no tinge. And, it had the funny effect, once my swim wave started, that I could not close my fingers. I actually swam rather well for me but the whole time, it was with open fingers, which meant slower and even colder. Anyway, out of the water, long run up to transition and off on to the bike taking a few seconds to put on a TriLondon winter cycling jacket for which I was later much grateful.

The ride was beautiful. It started with a long steady climb southeast-ish out of Llanberis up to Pen-Y-Pass at the end of which I could again feel my feet. The route then swooped anti-clockwise, flirting with the outskirts of Bangor before largely descending back into Llanberis. Quite, quite beautiful particularly after an hour or so when you could see the mountains again. I was reminded, although I had not really forgotten, that I am not a good cyclist. Part is all the stuff you would expect like technique, training, strength etc. But another part is just focus. I rather drift off. To really test myself, I should be keeping my heart rate above 150, easy to do on the climbs, but, on the flat bits, it wanders down to 140ish and I’m noticing the rather spectacular stream crashing down from on high. I’m having a great time in one sense but not in the other. I actually rather crave the focus of the climbs; suits me better.

There were some game supporters on the last section into transition giving everyone that welcome feeling that you count. Dismounted calmly, pressed all the buttons on the garmins and jogged to my stand, changed and was off. Although the rain had stopped and the sun was shining, I was drenched, with my skin having the curious slipperiness that made my Newtons feel like flip-flops rather than snug running shoes. I stopped after two hundred metres to check they were on. They were.

My little promise made to myself at the outset was that I would run the whole course and not walk at any point. And I did. In fact, I had rather a good run. There was a flat 3km or so from transition and then we started climbing and climbing and climbing up the side of the slate hill. It had all the scree and false crests that you would expect but I made sure I ran throughout. I passed loads of people walking who were all very encouraging. When we did finally reach the crest, it was then an uppy downy few kilometres where most people seemed to be walking the ups and running the downs. I kept passing people on the ups and also tried to run hard on the downs. On this leg, I was having a great time in both senses. My least favourite bit was the final descent. My descending is better than it was but I haven’t really mastered it. I kept pushing, however, and overtook a few others. It was a proud outcome that no one overtook me on the run.

So, what were my targets? It was a whimsical choice and I rather saw it as a training race. My talented team-mate did it last year in just under three hours, I think. So, I started feeling that sub-four hours was a must and close to three and a half hours would be pretty damn good. I ended halfway between the two. There were some minutes lost to that webbed hand swimming but it was really all about the bike. That said, I saved the best till last on the run and who knows perhaps those I was overtaking on the run had given their all on the bike.

Thoughts on the event? It was well-run with the exception of the early closure of transition leaving us in the cold. It is a sparsely populated area but lots of people made the effort to support from random places on the route. Stunning countryside. For Olympic distance people, it has that bit more: a good training race. It is, though, a long way. Train is definitely better than driving.

A Culture of Their Own

A vote for Brexit is a vote to have a something of our own. So, interestingly, said a (British) friend to me last week as we discussed the referendum, with him somewhat sympathetic to the out cause. He went on that the challenge for the British was that we no longer had anything that was special about us; that was just ours. We did not, for example, even have our own language – a language that we had that no one else did. A vote to be independent was a vote to have something that was ours and not shared.

This thought echoed during the past weekend spent in Copenhagen. Everyone with whom my wife and I had to deal spoke fantastic English; the hotel receptionist, the taxi driver, the waiter, the woman to whom I apologised after having inadvertently knocked while passing on a narrow pavement: “No problem”. The most trailered forthcoming programme on Danish TV was, as far as we could see, live coverage of the forthcoming FA Cup Final. On another continent, my little boy has, at his school in Bangkok, the chance to train with the Chelsea football academy.

Alongside our language and Association Football (and most other global sports), so much of our culture is shared. Shakespeare is the only global playwright. Our popular music is everywhere. You hear Adele on all continents. London is now clearly only geographically British. You could add the Royal Family to this. They are ours in some sense but only so far. The Queen sees herself as head of the Commonwealth. And they are global celebrities in a way that is not true of other royal families.

And this took my friend and I to the temperamental heart of the referendum debate. It is about how we feel and what we want to be. It is a question of identity. There is not a bigoted bone in my friend’s body (he happily grew up on the continent) but he likes the idea of a world comprised of distinct identities living together. My dream would seem to be of a more singular global identity; a global identity, I would add, comfortably containing lots of our DNA.

Where my friend and I agreed was that the long-term economics is a sideshow. We are going to be a lucky, rich and productive economy whether we choose to stay or go. I would argue that there are significant and needless short-term costs and risks associated with departure. His retort is that there may be, or may not be, but, regardless, it won’t make a difference in the long run and, anyway, is a modest price to pay.

The Silk Roads: Peter Frankopan

The Silk Roads was two books in one. One book was a fascinating re-writing of world history to anchor it at the centre of the world, essentially Persia and surrounding countries. The other was a diatribe against Western policy in the region during the twentieth century, and a bit beforehand. Besides finding the second part a little simplistic, I was more frustrated by the dissonance. I started with history and ended with a political polemic.

Starting with part one, Frankopan anchors history in the centre of the world by describing how it was at the epicentre of the great trade routes of history. He narrates the trades in silk, furs, horses, slaves, gold, silver, oil and wheat that have for millenia criss-crossed the centre of the world. It was also the route by which ideas, religions and technologies spread from East to West and vice versa.

Frankopan explains Britain’s involvement in the Entente Cordiale in the context of its struggle with Russia for the centre of the world. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, an expanding Russia was threatening British interests along the length of its southern Asian border from the Near East, through Persia and India, to China. Britain was faced with either entering a continental confrontation with Russia or allying with it. Choosing the latter path secured the Empire in Asia but lured Britain into the Franco-Russian confrontation with Germany and Austria-Hungary.

And it is the Great War that is something of the junction in the story where we go from history to polemic. The West’s involvement in the region, particularly Persia and, more recently, Iraq / Afghanistan is support for his contention that this is the centre of the world. But it is no longer narrated primarily to illustrate this. Instead, it is an attack, from the vantage point of the internationalist left, on Western policy. He wishes for the West to be held to account and craves that it be superseded. It might be right but the moralising was dissonant.

Staying with the present, Frankopan’s book resonates with the recent Chinese policy announcement of developing a silk road belt. But the Chinese also announced the creation of a maritime silk road, on which Frankopan touched less. It would intriguing to know, historically, where the balance lay between the maritime and road trades. An uninformed assumption would be that they inversely correlated. When the land route was dangerous and difficult, trade would revert to the sea and vice versa.

Finally, the book appeared before the Q4 2014 sell-off in oil and energy. Less than a couple of years on, we cannot know whether this is epochal or passing. In the former camp are those who say that US oil independence frees them from future intervention in the Gulf. I have always been a bit sceptical of this. After all, if oil prices do rise again, then regardless of US self-sufficiency, the US economy would be affected. Regardless, other, particularly Asian, powers are not self-sufficient so will presumably have to intervene.