Fauldhouse Sprint – Chris O’Neill
Took a chance on this race not knowing anything about it and wasn’t disappointed. A well organised and friendly event by GRC Tri.
Not a big fan of a pool swim for racing but the bike and run courses were worth it.
The swim was in a six lane pool that’s quite similar to Balfron. The rope style lane ropes make it a bit choppy but still managed to bag a 750m PB so couldn’t have been that bad. The face above will testify to the effort involved!
The bike course, although a wee bit short at 15km was brilliant. A big loop with 4 left turns if I remember right. No, hang on there might have been 5. Either way, no dead turns or nasty wee hills like ‘briggs. A couple of uphill drags but nothing very steep and finishing with a couple of kms fast descent back down to T2. Just long enough to give the legs a wee bit respite before the run.
The run is 99% off road on nicely compacted gravel paths. From T1 it heads up towards a forested area where we ran two laps, with a gentle climb and descent on each lap. Then a longer descent back to the finish line via 100m or so of pavement.
I came out the pool last in my lane having been lapped but managed to work my way up to 3rd position on the road. I was in no danger of catching 1st and 2nd (see the pic below) but it didn’t stop me trying. In the end I didn’t really see anyone in front or behind me on the run. Was disappointed to find out I was over three and a half minutes away from 2nd place but was reminded by my good lady when I got home that the boys in front have 20 years on me! So in all not a bad result.
Thanks again to GRC Tri for a great race and hopefully we will see some more team Fusion there next year.
Pictures in this post lifted from: https://grctri.wordpress.com/grc-fauldhouse-triathlon-2017-pictures/
