Where to start? The last couple of months have been jam-packed with sporting activities, socialising, and a little bit of work. It’s just been one thing after the next which is why this post is coming to you quite late, so apologies for that!
Back at the start of November was the second race of the Gwent cross country league. This was held in Cardiff over a disappointingly flat course. I’m sure they find the flattest course possible by holding them at either a leisure centre or in some park fields. What happened to real cross country?! Preparation and warm up for the race was far from ideal after spending 45 minutes in the queue for the toilet facilities as the portaloos hadn’t turned up. This wasn’t much of an issue as these races are effectively training sessions for me, albeit a very hard one. At these local league races you always just want to have a nice cruise to the finish as it’s all about position not time; but I seemed to have a repeat of the last one, battling against another girl right to the line. Over the last 2.5Km we kept changing positions, she was ahead of me, I’d overtake on the ‘hills’ and then she would be in front again on the flat. When she was gradually increasing the pace in the last half Km I was wondering whether I could hold on. I knew I had some extra speed left for the finish and the sudden gear change had worked for me at the previous race in the league. I am by no means the fastest sprinter around, but I believe this lady was a veteran so as I wondered, “can she match me? She can’t do, I have youth on my side at least!” With about 50m to go I went for it, and with about 15m to go I regretted it! The finish always looks so much closer on these long finishing straights, but once again I was deceived. However, she couldn’t match my pace and I held her off despite my collapse in the last 10m. I came in 1st, no, only joking, I finished 13th overall and 3rd finisher for Bristol and West Athletics Club. With 4 scores to count we just beat Swansea Harriers to take the top spot and therefore maintaining our position as current leaders of the league overall.
At the end of November was BUCS Duathlon and I promised you some drama, only I was hoping it wouldn’t come so soon. The start of the race certainly brought some excitement. Last year this event was my first ever duathlon, and it has a slightly unusual format of a 2 mile run, 10 mile cycle followed by the same 2 mile run. It was held at the Castle Coombe racing circuit, so we were guaranteed some quick times as we got to cycle on the motor circuit itself.
After a slightly hurried warm up (I’m sensing some race similarities here – I clearly need to work on this!) due to wheel changes and perhaps just generally not leaving myself enough preparation time, I made the race briefing and was doing my final stretches. I took this opportunity to mentally rehearse my transition procedure as I didn’t want a repeat of last year - I completely forgot to take my trainers off in transition 1. I ran down towards the transition line and realised I was about to mount my bike (which had my bike shoes attached to the pedals) when I was already wearing a pair of shoes. Doh! Back I went to take them off. I couldn’t make that mistake again this year! So, I genuinely hadn’t listened to a word of the briefing and was just hoping the course was the same as last year, thankfully it was and no issues there. Everyone started moving to the start, I gave my extra layers to my coach and he said, “get to the front.” With a narrow start line and inflatable arch I was standing in about the 3rd row back. Then, unusually, I saw a couple of girls sprint off the front and go out into the car park. I thought to myself, “huh, I remember doing that at BUCS triathlon when I......HOLY SHIT. MY TIMING CHIP!!” In a few seconds of panic where I did a full 360° turn, many options were going through my head....... I could ask someone to get it. They won’t know where it is. I can’t miss the start of the race. But I won’t get a time or position without it. Oh God.... RUN! I barged through the people in front of me (sorry if you were one of them!), sprinted into the car park, which was just next to the run route thankfully. “Jesus Christ, why are all the rental vans white?” I spotted the van. Knowing exactly where my chip was, I opened the driver’s door, “Crap, wrong van!” Then I spotted the actual van, grabbed my bag and threw all my personal belongings onto the muddy grass, grabbed my chip and sprinted back. I had to ask my teammates to throw everything back in the van for me. I was convinced the race would start before I could make it and I had visions of the rest of the athletes running away from the start line as I was running towards it! I heard the 10 second call and leapt off the verge onto the tarmac run route. Now I’m not sure whether I slipped or miss judged the landing, probably the latter, but I somehow managed to nearly stack it and fall on my front. However I stayed on my feet with my timing chip in hand and had no choice but to go to the front. I quickly wrapped the chip around my ankle, assumed race position, received a cheer from the boys who were spectating and the klaxon sounded. “Great, well done Grace. On the start line with a heart rate of about 200!”... NEVER AGAIN.... but at least I got to the front. ;-) God, I’m sweating just thinking about this again. So aside from that, the race itself went well. Needless to say, the adrenaline rush caused me to sprint off at the start, but I settled into a rhythm. Have you ever come across the hard, harder and hardest effort in sets of three in training?! Well, similar to this my tactics were to go out fairly hard, cycle harder and run my hardest at the end. It’s only a sprint after all. I came into transition in 16th, had a fairly smooth transition except for getting my helmet buckle stuck (this proved quite tricky with gloves on) and I was on my way, without my trainers this time. I was going round this fast track on my tri bars and absolutely loving life. Obviously this was helped by the fact that I was overtaking everybody (well, almost) and nobody was overtaking me. I had done the first of five laps and was already in need of a drink. I always try to pick the best time to take a drink to avoid losing precious seconds as I’d slow down to do so. OK, yes, I’m very competitive. (Perhaps I shouldn’t mention the fact I only fill my bottle to half way on a sprint race as I’ll never drink it all and the extra weight will clearly slow me down!) I didn’t want to lose time on the first section as it was slightly uphill and a good pace would set me up for the tougher middle section. The second section was into the wind so that was a definite no, and the final section had a tail wind so I wanted to make the most of the tri bars to maintain speed in that section. “Looks like I’m not having a drink then!” This whole thought process took about 2 laps anyway so I just kept my head down and put up with a dry mouth. I entered transition with a girl in sight and unbeknown to me I was in 3rd place. I had a girl on my heels going out of transition, so I had to get my legs turning over and keep up the speed. Annoyingly, the second men’s race had just started their first run leg on the same course, and despite being men, they were a lot slower, well the back end of the group was at least. This was very frustrating and I found myself dodging around them and having to run on the slippery grass. Although this meant I was unable to see the girl I was chasing, it actually worked to my advantage as the girl behind couldn’t spot me. I had a solid last run and held my 3rd position. A good improvement from last year’s 9th place. The results showed I had the fastest bike time too, whoop! Unfortunately I missed out on a bottle of wine by half a second as this was awarded to the fastest single lap. Maybe I should have been thinking about that bottle of wine and not that bottle of water! However, I probably took 2nd, 3rd and 4th place for this as my 2nd-4th bike lap times were all within a second of each other. Living up to my middle name – Grace consistency France! Overall I was very happy with my performance, and was delighted to have medalled as I had a big support crew watching, including my Dad who hadn’t seen me race for probably over 5 years.
Back at the start of November was the second race of the Gwent cross country league. This was held in Cardiff over a disappointingly flat course. I’m sure they find the flattest course possible by holding them at either a leisure centre or in some park fields. What happened to real cross country?! Preparation and warm up for the race was far from ideal after spending 45 minutes in the queue for the toilet facilities as the portaloos hadn’t turned up. This wasn’t much of an issue as these races are effectively training sessions for me, albeit a very hard one. At these local league races you always just want to have a nice cruise to the finish as it’s all about position not time; but I seemed to have a repeat of the last one, battling against another girl right to the line. Over the last 2.5Km we kept changing positions, she was ahead of me, I’d overtake on the ‘hills’ and then she would be in front again on the flat. When she was gradually increasing the pace in the last half Km I was wondering whether I could hold on. I knew I had some extra speed left for the finish and the sudden gear change had worked for me at the previous race in the league. I am by no means the fastest sprinter around, but I believe this lady was a veteran so as I wondered, “can she match me? She can’t do, I have youth on my side at least!” With about 50m to go I went for it, and with about 15m to go I regretted it! The finish always looks so much closer on these long finishing straights, but once again I was deceived. However, she couldn’t match my pace and I held her off despite my collapse in the last 10m. I came in 1st, no, only joking, I finished 13th overall and 3rd finisher for Bristol and West Athletics Club. With 4 scores to count we just beat Swansea Harriers to take the top spot and therefore maintaining our position as current leaders of the league overall.
At the end of November was BUCS Duathlon and I promised you some drama, only I was hoping it wouldn’t come so soon. The start of the race certainly brought some excitement. Last year this event was my first ever duathlon, and it has a slightly unusual format of a 2 mile run, 10 mile cycle followed by the same 2 mile run. It was held at the Castle Coombe racing circuit, so we were guaranteed some quick times as we got to cycle on the motor circuit itself.
After a slightly hurried warm up (I’m sensing some race similarities here – I clearly need to work on this!) due to wheel changes and perhaps just generally not leaving myself enough preparation time, I made the race briefing and was doing my final stretches. I took this opportunity to mentally rehearse my transition procedure as I didn’t want a repeat of last year - I completely forgot to take my trainers off in transition 1. I ran down towards the transition line and realised I was about to mount my bike (which had my bike shoes attached to the pedals) when I was already wearing a pair of shoes. Doh! Back I went to take them off. I couldn’t make that mistake again this year! So, I genuinely hadn’t listened to a word of the briefing and was just hoping the course was the same as last year, thankfully it was and no issues there. Everyone started moving to the start, I gave my extra layers to my coach and he said, “get to the front.” With a narrow start line and inflatable arch I was standing in about the 3rd row back. Then, unusually, I saw a couple of girls sprint off the front and go out into the car park. I thought to myself, “huh, I remember doing that at BUCS triathlon when I......HOLY SHIT. MY TIMING CHIP!!” In a few seconds of panic where I did a full 360° turn, many options were going through my head....... I could ask someone to get it. They won’t know where it is. I can’t miss the start of the race. But I won’t get a time or position without it. Oh God.... RUN! I barged through the people in front of me (sorry if you were one of them!), sprinted into the car park, which was just next to the run route thankfully. “Jesus Christ, why are all the rental vans white?” I spotted the van. Knowing exactly where my chip was, I opened the driver’s door, “Crap, wrong van!” Then I spotted the actual van, grabbed my bag and threw all my personal belongings onto the muddy grass, grabbed my chip and sprinted back. I had to ask my teammates to throw everything back in the van for me. I was convinced the race would start before I could make it and I had visions of the rest of the athletes running away from the start line as I was running towards it! I heard the 10 second call and leapt off the verge onto the tarmac run route. Now I’m not sure whether I slipped or miss judged the landing, probably the latter, but I somehow managed to nearly stack it and fall on my front. However I stayed on my feet with my timing chip in hand and had no choice but to go to the front. I quickly wrapped the chip around my ankle, assumed race position, received a cheer from the boys who were spectating and the klaxon sounded. “Great, well done Grace. On the start line with a heart rate of about 200!”... NEVER AGAIN.... but at least I got to the front. ;-) God, I’m sweating just thinking about this again. So aside from that, the race itself went well. Needless to say, the adrenaline rush caused me to sprint off at the start, but I settled into a rhythm. Have you ever come across the hard, harder and hardest effort in sets of three in training?! Well, similar to this my tactics were to go out fairly hard, cycle harder and run my hardest at the end. It’s only a sprint after all. I came into transition in 16th, had a fairly smooth transition except for getting my helmet buckle stuck (this proved quite tricky with gloves on) and I was on my way, without my trainers this time. I was going round this fast track on my tri bars and absolutely loving life. Obviously this was helped by the fact that I was overtaking everybody (well, almost) and nobody was overtaking me. I had done the first of five laps and was already in need of a drink. I always try to pick the best time to take a drink to avoid losing precious seconds as I’d slow down to do so. OK, yes, I’m very competitive. (Perhaps I shouldn’t mention the fact I only fill my bottle to half way on a sprint race as I’ll never drink it all and the extra weight will clearly slow me down!) I didn’t want to lose time on the first section as it was slightly uphill and a good pace would set me up for the tougher middle section. The second section was into the wind so that was a definite no, and the final section had a tail wind so I wanted to make the most of the tri bars to maintain speed in that section. “Looks like I’m not having a drink then!” This whole thought process took about 2 laps anyway so I just kept my head down and put up with a dry mouth. I entered transition with a girl in sight and unbeknown to me I was in 3rd place. I had a girl on my heels going out of transition, so I had to get my legs turning over and keep up the speed. Annoyingly, the second men’s race had just started their first run leg on the same course, and despite being men, they were a lot slower, well the back end of the group was at least. This was very frustrating and I found myself dodging around them and having to run on the slippery grass. Although this meant I was unable to see the girl I was chasing, it actually worked to my advantage as the girl behind couldn’t spot me. I had a solid last run and held my 3rd position. A good improvement from last year’s 9th place. The results showed I had the fastest bike time too, whoop! Unfortunately I missed out on a bottle of wine by half a second as this was awarded to the fastest single lap. Maybe I should have been thinking about that bottle of wine and not that bottle of water! However, I probably took 2nd, 3rd and 4th place for this as my 2nd-4th bike lap times were all within a second of each other. Living up to my middle name – Grace consistency France! Overall I was very happy with my performance, and was delighted to have medalled as I had a big support crew watching, including my Dad who hadn’t seen me race for probably over 5 years.
Winter training has been going well so far and I recorded my fastest times in a set in a 50m pool – always a good sign of progress :-) Outside of my busy training and racing schedule, my social life was just as hectic. My Dad works and lives in Nairobi and having not seen him for over 3 years, he was in the UK for 10 days. This in itself required some celebrating, but also he turned 60 in October. There was a lot of fine dining with relatives and I also took him to see Michael McIntyre in Bristol, which I highly recommend if you’re a fan! The fun didn't stop there as we had more celebrations in London with my brother turning 30 too.
In other news, I passed my PhD at the beginning of December :-) After a painful 3 hour viva, I have a few corrections to do before submitting the final version which will be stored in the University of Bristol library. I’ll let you know when it’s done as I’m sure you are all dying to read about the ‘features of NMDA receptor-dependent LTP and LTD in the CA1 area of P14 and adult hippocampal slices.’ Are you still with me or have you dozed off?! So, soon to be Dr Grace consistency France.
December finished with a round trip visiting my relatives before Christmas. I did a quick tour around the Stratford area and even got a chance to go cycling round the Cotswolds with my uncle before heading back to my Mum’s in Essex for Christmas.
So, finally just to say Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you all. I hope 2015 brings you good fortune! 2014 has been a successful year for me but I’m sensing some greater things for 2015.
In other news, I passed my PhD at the beginning of December :-) After a painful 3 hour viva, I have a few corrections to do before submitting the final version which will be stored in the University of Bristol library. I’ll let you know when it’s done as I’m sure you are all dying to read about the ‘features of NMDA receptor-dependent LTP and LTD in the CA1 area of P14 and adult hippocampal slices.’ Are you still with me or have you dozed off?! So, soon to be Dr Grace consistency France.
December finished with a round trip visiting my relatives before Christmas. I did a quick tour around the Stratford area and even got a chance to go cycling round the Cotswolds with my uncle before heading back to my Mum’s in Essex for Christmas.
So, finally just to say Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you all. I hope 2015 brings you good fortune! 2014 has been a successful year for me but I’m sensing some greater things for 2015.