Something a bit different again as this race I would be guiding a visually impaired athlete. Paul is based in Barrhead and we had met a couple of times on training weekends designed specifically for visually impaired triathletes. Run by Vision for Adventure (www.visionofadventure.org ) a charity set up to specifically provide this kind of training I was looking forward to racing with for the first time.

Not having access to a tandem in Glasgow, anyone know of one going cheap? I had been down to run with him a couple of times in the run up to the race. It can be quite challenging being someone’s eyes and keeping up a commentary that enables them to perform at their best. Training on a track enables us to focus on running rather than dodging obstacles and people.

We travelled down to Lancaster on the Saturday to enable us to set the bike up, basically take as much of the touring stuff off as we could and set the seat heights up. Neither of us is confident to ride with clips yet but it will come! We also got a couple of laps in round the circuit to gauge gear changes and worked out we could both stand at the same time and power up the short ‘hills’ and get fairly well tucked in to get over 55Kmh on the slight down hill sections. There was also the challenge of two roundabouts, one taken the wrong way round and several speed humps.

The weather was superb on race day and Paul got off to a cracking start with a swim in 8’30” we ran into T1 where they hadn’t realised we’d started and had to ask both marshals and other competitors to politely get out of the way, still 1’14” to put on socks, shoes, helmets and get out with a tandem was quite quick.

The bike started with a short climb to get onto the university ring road which we then did 9 times before charging back done to T2. We rode hard on the bike, a big heavy mountain bike with fat tyres and played cat and mouse with another visually impaired athlete and his guide, who on the last lap pulled away from us. Still 40’07” was only 7” over what we had planned for. Another swift transition 26” and we were off on the run.

After negotiating timing mats and kerbs we got onto the 5km one lap run, a mixture of grass, wood chipped paths, surprisingly nice to run on, and tarmac paths taking us around the university boundary. After a cracking 25’ 5km earlier in the week we were hoping for something close. Not having had chance to recce the run course were unprepared for kissing gates, narrow board walks and paths that were a bit tight for two runners side by side. Still finished in 31’10” with a total time of 1:22:03.

A good time for Paul based on previous events and we will be training together more, aiming for the standard at Southport in May next year. Open water swimming can get really interesting!