At 5am the alarm goes, and Emma hops out of bed ready to face the day. As always, I'm a little more sluggish, but it makes a change from having to sneak out quietly. For today I have a companion in my tri adventures, as Mrs Piper faces her first triathlon. It's been a little while coming - the event she originally targeted in May was cancelled late in the day - but the next instalment of the Salty Sea Dog triathlon series offers a perfect chance to have a go at the Super Sprint distance (375m swim, 10k bike, 2.5k run), while I tackle the normal Sprint event as a prep for the London Tri.
The car park at Boscombe Pier is already filling up when we arrive shortly after 6am. It's hard not to start looking around to compare yourself to others, and I definitely feel a little smug when someone tries to enter the car park (height restriction: 2.1m) with the bike on their roof. They already have the attention of a number of people who have guessed what's coming, but if anyone hasn't noticed, they do when the sound of bike against barrier rings around the car park.
An hour later, and we're on the sand waiting for the hooter to sound. There's a breeze, but the sun is shining and the water is warm, and definitely calmer than it was last time out. Heading into the water, I'm somewhere in the middle of the pack, and for a couple of minutes I'm fending off other competitors all around, buoyed with confidence from last week's Pier to Pier swim that I can put in a good showing. By the time I reach the outmost orange buoy, I'm starting to worry that I'm being overtaken by rather a lot of people, even those breaststroking by as they take a bit of a breather.
The water is beautifully clear, and even at a depth of 10-15 feet I can see the sea bed. I can also see the jellyfish swimming just a few inches below me. Its little grey face - I think it was his face, hard to tell with these lads - beams up at me as he floats on by. I catch sight of a few more over the rest of the swim, thankfully at a bit more of a distance than the first, and I wonder what Em makes of them, given how much she'd worried about them in our training, without ever actually seeing one.
The swim seems to go on for ages, and people continue to easily overtake me, despite my best efforts. I reach the end thoroughly demoralised, and thoroughly glad to be out of there. Transition is made easy by the new tri suit - wetsuit off, bike shoes on, helmet on, sunglasses on, go.
The cycle goes straight up the steep climb from the Pier, but I've climbed it numerous times in the past few weeks and it's relatively straightforward. Like the last Salty Sea Dog, the wind is blowing from the west, so the ride down to Hengistbury Head is fast. I overtake a number of other people, which starts to make up for the disappointing swim, and even on the return I manage to keep up a reasonable speed into the headwind. Nearly back at Boscombe, I catch up with Em, but while she's nearly back at T2, I have to navigate the roundabout at the Pier and head up that hill again. Pleasingly, I overtake a couple of more serious-looking athletes on the way up (and the Strava data shows I set a new PB for the climb), but I pay for it at the top as a wave of nausea comes over me, and the two I passed come flying by me again.
The rest of the ride passes without note. Until.
I'm finally heading back down the big hill, 200 yards until transition, head down, arms tucked in, trying to maintain an aerodynamic position. Even though I've had slight success with wearing my bike shoes a bit loose, my feet are a little bit numb, so I decide to give them a wiggle to bring some life back before the run. I twist and turn my feet, still clipped in to the pedals. Suddenly there's a thud, and before I know it my back wheel is skidding down the hill. The heel of my left shoe has connected with the spokes, and is now well and truly trapped by the force of the wheel straining to rotate. It's taken a couple of seconds to understand what's happening, and things are now in slow motion. I'm still upright at least. The marshall at the junction at the bottom is watching quizzically, wondering what on earth I'm doing. My first thought is to unclip and put my foot down, but with a couple of tugs it's clear that the left shoe - the one I always put down first - is going nowhere. It's a blessing that I was going so fast, because it gives a couple of vital extra seconds to think about what I'm doing to do.
(at this point in the documentary, cut to adverts for added suspense)
My solution to the problem is sheer genius: unclip the other foot. Actually easier said than done. Whilst unclipping itself is fine, as the bike slides to a halt every bone in your body has a natural desire to lean to the left and put your left foot down. It takes a lot of concentration to shift weight to the other side - enough to make the bike drop on that side, but not so much that you fall off before you can get the foot down. Finally the bike loses it's kinetic energy, my right foot goes down, the bike leans steadily to the right, and I've survived.
(cue music)
I untangle my trapped shoe, and roll on the down the hill slowly. The marshall starts to jog up towards me - I try and explain as I pass, but it's possibly gibberish. Looking down I see that my wheel has taken on a slight buckle, so taking it very cautiously, I turn onto the promenade and head towards transition. It's only after the race that I see the state of my tyre.
After a pleasingly pacy run, final time is 1:39.50 - a couple of minutes quicker than the last Sea Dog. I'm pleased to go under 1:40, but disappointed that it's not a bigger margin. On reflection, the swim was long, perhaps as much as 1200 metres according to Strava, and everything else - T1, Bike (even with the incident), T2, Run - was quicker than last time. Not to mention, Em meets her targets of a) surviving, b) finishing and c) not coming last, so I think we can chalk up a success.
Onwards to London.
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