Triathlon d'Amiens - Olympic Distance - 25 September 2016
As told by Chief Race Office
Sean Hurst
After racing a few weeks ago on the other side of the world it was back to reality for Cat with a catch up race for Challenge points after missing Chantilly. These 'local' races, whilst generally smaller than the average, are normally extremely competitive and Amiens was no exception. There were large numbers from a lot of regional clubs such as Baie de Somme, Beauvais, Abbeville, Montreuil etc with the VF ladies looking a pretty formidable bunch.
Cat has made significant improvements on her swim times this year and she came out of the water 13th/30 for the ladies overall. I got that information to her as she came out of T1 in order to give her motivation on the bike (not that she needs it) and she finished the rolling bike course picking up another 5-6 places after putting in the best VF bike split. After a 3-loop run course around the étangs she finished 1st in VF3 and came 3rd overall in VF narrowly missing out on 2nd place by less than a minute to one of the Abbeville vets.
There was also an Australian exit for the swim which occurred after nearly 1400m of the swim where competitors had to clamber over a 2m wide bank from one lake to another and then have a 100m made dash to the exit proper.
The swim exit, transition area was very compact so it was great to see all the action by being in one place. Watching with my support-crew t-shirt on I witnessed the whole range of dos and don'ts in transition including using front-brakes only at the dismount line and going over the handle bars, dismounting too fast and careering into the barriers, not unclipping shoes soon enough etc etc. And, as Karen & Wippy (our qualified Expatriés refs) will point out, you must leave transition with both your dossard and chip timer!!
The race was really well organised, with really helpful staff and I'd highly recommend this as an event for next year given it's only about a 1h45 drive from Paris. I might even do it myself!
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