Race Preview - Turriff Triathlon

2015 Race Preview

2015 Race Report

Time for my first proper race of the season. I can't complain too much about my preparation. It would have been nice to have done more on the bike and to have spent some real time out on my TT bike, and it would have been nice not have had a problem with my calf last week, and less stress from work but those are small issues and they won't really hurt my race. 

Ignore the swim time from the official results, it is skewed by the long Turriff transition. By my own timing I clocked 13:02 last year. 

I want to get inside 13 minutes for the swim. The pool is a strange size with handrails at the end and that does affect my swim time every year. Also the funny pool means it is 760m instead of 750m. That doesn't seem like a lot but it is about 10 seconds extra. Even given those factors I would like to go somewhere closer to 12:40. And I would like to make more out of the transition. It is a bit of a run to the bike racks and in previous years I have lost time on the run down and on the transition itself. 

My bike time on this course was 40 minutes exactly last year for 13.1 miles. That was already close to a 20mph average so I don't really expect to go any faster this year. It is a bit weather dependent though. A calm and warm day and there is time to be made up here. A bit of a wind, a chill and some rain and I could easily throw away 5 minutes. 

My second transition is normally pretty slick so nothing to gain there. 

So to this point I have only aimed to nibble seconds, maybe a minute in total from last year's time. I should be here in 55 minutes-ish. Now the run is definitely a place where I can make some decent time. The course is short so I should run under 20 minutes despite it going up and down a fairly significant hill. I would really like to see that somewhere under the 19 minute mark if possible. 

Anything under 1 hour 15 mins I will be happy with, under 1 hr 14 and I will be ecstatic. A bit of give and take for weather on the bike and I could go a couple of minutes over those and still come out happy. 


As targets for Strathclyde I will have to get within 120% of the winner of my age-group and be in the top-4 to get an automatic place. If I don't get in the top-4 (likely) I still have to be within 120% to have any chance of a roll-down place. I should be aiming at that as a minimum standard in this lower quality race. I really want to be within 120% of the overall winner and be in a podium place for Vets. Those are both a bit dependent on who turns up but are both in the realms of possibility.