Athy as bad as they say?

[Dena]

hasnt been a race report in a while so here goes

If being perfectly honest I really didn't want to hand over €90 to triathy, it's got a bad rep, Tom did it last year and had major issues and it was a for profit race, but with the only other half IM bring in Galway I took the logistically and cheaper money option and went for it.
This was going to be the only other target goal race then Roth, which includes pace goals, nutrition strategy a small tapper and a finishing goal of podium position.

Alarm was set for 4:30 nothing new there, up feed and done I was on the road for 5am . I wanted to be one of the first into transition, I like to take my time with set up, walk through the transition in/out mil around and prepare my body for what's to come.
A new self seeded 2wave set up was brought in this year and I made sure I was off in the first wave of 150 . I was looking forward to this, it had been 2 years since my last triathlon/open water swim and tbh I have never worked as hard in swimming
My swim blocks have contained a 5 k every week and lots of tough speed work in arklow on Monday with the master group. I had been smashing the pool 100,sub 1:30 and 3k TT sub 52 . I got this.... Swim went by uneventful and I actually thought something wrong when I came out and looked at the watch 58... WTF!!!! Ok don't panic some one just shouted 6th lady
Onto the bike. Plan was to have a negative split over the 2 lap course and it took a lot of mental strength to hold back , but I stuck to the plan and everything went great bang on target of 32/33 KPH passing into 3rd lady.
Mentally in the last 10 min I've already switched to T2 and the run. My strongest and favourite, this is where I work.
Onto the run course and Tom and the kids inform me I'm 4and half min down on 2nd I'll not know if it's possible to catch until we go around the first 5k and c what's between us then, I set of and start with a 21 :30 1st lap and I've made up over 2 min
Tom tells me same pace for lap 2 . I did do this but it's a few seconds off due to a tiolet / squat by a car break.
I go out on 3rd lap and pass into 2nd within first mile. 1st is beyond reach due to her amazing swim of 46 and my shit of 58 but let's do some damage control,,, hammer home and dig in too have the fastest women's run split of the day.
Scrapped under the 5 hrs .
All said and done Athy had some problems and official results took few days but tbh I did have a positive race and ticked all my pre race goals. lots left to work on over the next 4 weeks but hopefully all will come together .
Well done to all the other 795 Ers that took part ye all had great encouragement on the day. Sorry if I didn't repay on the course I dint even wave to the kids if that's an excuse.

[kevin]

well done dena and thanks for the encouragement on the run you went out past me like i was running backwards I had to check my pace see if I was still moving. by the way I done the sprint 2years ago and it was a terrible experience really badly organised. but I have to say this year and it was my first Olympic distance I was really happy with this race especially the rolling start as the swim is my weakest was a great day.

[Yvette D]

thanks Dena, great insight to thought behind a tri. Loved the report.