Nice Tri St Neots Sprint Race Report After a week of rubbish weather forecasts it was nice and sunny but still cool when I got to St Neots. Registered and had time to stop at the phsyio tent for 10mins work on my shoulder, £10 to Help for Heroes and piece of mind for me. Lots of faffing as it was my first tri and not really sure how to set up transition but back to the car with extra kit with plenty of time to get the wetsuit on and back to the river. 12C is proper cold and took my breath away and made my hands and feet numb straight away. I tried to warm up and get my front crawl working but with little success before the starter called us to the line. Up to the turn round point i was probably doing half and half crawl and breast stroke but then I got control of my breathing and apart form a few short pauses front crawled the second half. Need to work on open water swims and in crowds if I'm going to have a decent IM swim later in the year. 750m in 17:42 T1 I decided I was going to take my time and not be rushed or cold. Quick rub over with a towel compressing socks and bike shoes on, buff, arm warmers, bike mitts, helmet and I was off. 5:29  Loved the bike from the start felt really fresh and up for a race. Started overtaking straight away and continued overtaking the whole time. The only people that overtook me were the first Vet Male and first Female from the waves behind me and they were going like the wind with twat hats and disc wheels. Very flat course there was only one hill where I had to change to the smaller chain ring. 25k in 43:24 (something like 21mph average if my maths is right) T2 rack bike, off with helmet, mitts, on with pirate cap and shoes, buff and arm warmers where forgotten until I started running so they got stuffed into back pocket of tri top. Couple of cheers of Go Pirate, which where much appreciated. 2 loop run across a park settled into a 7:15 pace which was faster than planned but it felt ok so I kept with it. 2 laps felt fine and was over before I know it. 5km in 21:16 (5km pb as I've never done a timed 10km before) Total time 1:29:21, wasn't expecting to get below 1:30 so well pleased and if the swim had gone better who knows what I would have got. My shoulder is sore now and its going to be hell in the morning but ha ho. Good day, nice race and very well organised. Offical time printed just after you crossed the line, how good is that? | 
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Scuba Trooper
