Hever Castle 70.3 "The Gauntlet" (Sunday September 25th 2016)
I moved my late season 70.3 from Ironman Weymouth 70.3 (Sep 11th) to the Hever Castle "Gauntlet" (25th Sept) for a few different reasons; bikes can be racked on the morning of the event, the venue is only a 45 minute (pre-6am!) drive from Clapham Common, and it gave me a few extra weeks to get over a nagging calf injury that had stopped me from doing many long distance runs ahead of race day.
I would highly recommend the Gauntlet to anyone considering entering. It is a superbly run event, the setting around the Castle is stunning, and its proximity to London (together with a pre-race morning registration & bike rack) means time away from the family is kept to a minimum. But be warned, the course on both the bike & run legs are tough! I would say comparable to Wimbleball 70.3, so do not expect to post a PB on this course. The bike leg has around 1,500m of climbing (I cannot recall one flat section..) whilst the run has close to 300m, and is 90% on trails. All of this results in a finishing time at least 30 minutes more than a 'flat' course 70.3 time.
The Race
Registration opened at 6.30am for a wave 1 start time of 8am. I got to registration (a 15 minute walk from the car park) at 7am to find absolutely no queue, resulting in me getting to transition nearly a FULL HOUR before the gun would be fired. "What are these calm and relaxed sensations I am feeling..? Is this what everyone else usually feels on race morning...? I could get used to this.." Usually getting to an event start involves another entry onto my "all-time top 10 most stressful moments in life" list. Recent entries to that list have included, i) IM Frankfurt 2015 - my alarm failed to go off, I got woken by my taxi, I had to eat my cereal raw in the back of the car, and due to traffic I had to RUN the final 1.5km to transition, arriving 30 seconds before clsoing, ii) Dorney Mid-Week Sprint Triathlon, Summer 2013 - I arrived at registration 5 minutes after the race had started (a new world record for entering a wetsuit was made that day), iii) IM Austria 2012 - I left all of my nutrition and hydration in the fridge, realising the moment I turned off the motorway arriving at the race venue.. the return journey back to the hotel might have seen a few laws broken). Actually, I tell a lie, there was one pre-race panic as I was standing next to the water (5 minutes from transition) listening to the race briefing when I suddenly remembered I hadn't removed (or taped) my wedding ring.. "It's an emergency!" I shouted upon seeing an Ambulance, a very helpful chat handed me a waterproof plaster, and then it was time to focus on the 5 hour race ahead.
SWIM - Its a great route, you swim the length of the Castle lake, then turn around and swim into the river that feeds the lake, so there is a 10 minute section where you are swimming in a channel just 5-10m wide. The water is very muddy, so you pretty much see nothing the whole way around, but the marker buoys are placed pretty much every 100m and so it is hard to swim off course (although some idiots still managed it). I got punched fully in the face three times before the first 500m... The first two came as a shock, but by the third, and a bit like a sparring session, I was used to it. On coming out of the river channel and back to the Lake, make sure you keep to the right, and don't do what some idiot did on the day and miss the narrow channel to the finishing line (and swim straight into the swimmers waiting to go off at the 8.30am wave).. adding some 15-20 seconds to your race time - its something I will not do again, I promise. I exited the water in 31:24, but with the clock stopping as you enter transition I was given an official time of 32:34.
STRAVA: https://www.strava.com/activities/724638946
BIKE - my first transition was hopeless (coining the same expression used when recounting my race to my wife immediately after the finish), as I had planned on putting on a compression top before the bike leg as the temperatures were still pretty low. This was a major fail because my hands were so cold.. all I ended up doing was getting my head into the top, and little else in the way of basic dressing took place over the next 20 seconds. My arms got entangled in a lot of twisted material and so I decided to abandon the idea of wearing the extra layer, something I was pleased with later as the temperature really warmed up by the second half. Having said this, I was pleased to have spent the extra 10 seconds putting on a pair of socks, especially as I didn't want my feet cut up on the run leg like they were post London Triathlon. I'll do this at any distance over Olympic in future. I headed out of transition and over the dismount line, hashing up putting my feet into my already clipped in bike shoes as the first 30-40 meters of the bike is uphill... next time I will be running out of transition with my shoes already on... In summing up the bike course I would state "the whole 2 lap 90km course is relentlessly up or down, with hardly any flat sections", and by lap two there was a noticeable number of riders blowing up who had underestimated the 1,500m ascent throughout. By the end of the second bike lap we were catching some of the wave 2 Gauntlet starters who were nearing the end of their first lap, and I swear that one woman shouted "Sod off!" when I gave her encouragement whilst overtaking on one of the many hills. I was a fight to keep my average speed at 30kmph, my pre-race target, however pleasingly I managed to do consistent 45km laps with my two lap times being within 39 seconds of each other (1:31:04 & 1:31:43) for a total bike time of 3:04.
STRAVA: https://www.strava.com/activities/724639296
RUN - Out of T2 and up the first hill on the two lap 10.5km course I realised my run legs had been left at home... I had picked up a hand bottle of Caffeine High 5 fluid (my own), plus a few gels, all of which were consumed early on meaning I actually started feeling better on the second half of the run. I did not realise that the run course was going to be that much off-road.. trails, narrow paths, farm fields, grass and some gravel paths were interspersed with only about 400m of tarmac in total, and like the bike route, the run route was hardly flat the whole way round. I got passed by the winner of the event just before my lap 2 started, calculating that he was on for a 4:30 finish, a superb time considering the winner the year before was a 4:50. With a lot of Olympic distance runners out on the run course there were plenty of targets to keep the mind focused, and before long the run was nearly over and I was heading into the finish. It was wonderful to see my wife and son Sebastian (the first time he has ever 'seen' me finish a race!), around 100m from the line, and i felt compelled to stop and give them both a quick kiss, meaning I had to sprint the last 50m to keep at bay the athlete who had sniffed an opportunity to overtake a fellow athlete dawdling in the finishing chute... I was pleasantly surprised to cross the line in 5:22, a time gave me 21st overall, and 5th in the 40-44 age category.
STRAVA: https://www.strava.com/activities/724639159
Link to all 2016 Gauntlet Half Ironman results can be found here : http://www.stuweb.co.uk/race/1et/
I moved my late season 70.3 from Ironman Weymouth 70.3 (Sep 11th) to the Hever Castle "Gauntlet" (25th Sept) for a few different reasons; bikes can be racked on the morning of the event, the venue is only a 45 minute (pre-6am!) drive from Clapham Common, and it gave me a few extra weeks to get over a nagging calf injury that had stopped me from doing many long distance runs ahead of race day.
I would highly recommend the Gauntlet to anyone considering entering. It is a superbly run event, the setting around the Castle is stunning, and its proximity to London (together with a pre-race morning registration & bike rack) means time away from the family is kept to a minimum. But be warned, the course on both the bike & run legs are tough! I would say comparable to Wimbleball 70.3, so do not expect to post a PB on this course. The bike leg has around 1,500m of climbing (I cannot recall one flat section..) whilst the run has close to 300m, and is 90% on trails. All of this results in a finishing time at least 30 minutes more than a 'flat' course 70.3 time.
The Race
Registration opened at 6.30am for a wave 1 start time of 8am. I got to registration (a 15 minute walk from the car park) at 7am to find absolutely no queue, resulting in me getting to transition nearly a FULL HOUR before the gun would be fired. "What are these calm and relaxed sensations I am feeling..? Is this what everyone else usually feels on race morning...? I could get used to this.." Usually getting to an event start involves another entry onto my "all-time top 10 most stressful moments in life" list. Recent entries to that list have included, i) IM Frankfurt 2015 - my alarm failed to go off, I got woken by my taxi, I had to eat my cereal raw in the back of the car, and due to traffic I had to RUN the final 1.5km to transition, arriving 30 seconds before clsoing, ii) Dorney Mid-Week Sprint Triathlon, Summer 2013 - I arrived at registration 5 minutes after the race had started (a new world record for entering a wetsuit was made that day), iii) IM Austria 2012 - I left all of my nutrition and hydration in the fridge, realising the moment I turned off the motorway arriving at the race venue.. the return journey back to the hotel might have seen a few laws broken). Actually, I tell a lie, there was one pre-race panic as I was standing next to the water (5 minutes from transition) listening to the race briefing when I suddenly remembered I hadn't removed (or taped) my wedding ring.. "It's an emergency!" I shouted upon seeing an Ambulance, a very helpful chat handed me a waterproof plaster, and then it was time to focus on the 5 hour race ahead.
SWIM - Its a great route, you swim the length of the Castle lake, then turn around and swim into the river that feeds the lake, so there is a 10 minute section where you are swimming in a channel just 5-10m wide. The water is very muddy, so you pretty much see nothing the whole way around, but the marker buoys are placed pretty much every 100m and so it is hard to swim off course (although some idiots still managed it). I got punched fully in the face three times before the first 500m... The first two came as a shock, but by the third, and a bit like a sparring session, I was used to it. On coming out of the river channel and back to the Lake, make sure you keep to the right, and don't do what some idiot did on the day and miss the narrow channel to the finishing line (and swim straight into the swimmers waiting to go off at the 8.30am wave).. adding some 15-20 seconds to your race time - its something I will not do again, I promise. I exited the water in 31:24, but with the clock stopping as you enter transition I was given an official time of 32:34.
STRAVA: https://www.strava.com/activities/724638946
BIKE - my first transition was hopeless (coining the same expression used when recounting my race to my wife immediately after the finish), as I had planned on putting on a compression top before the bike leg as the temperatures were still pretty low. This was a major fail because my hands were so cold.. all I ended up doing was getting my head into the top, and little else in the way of basic dressing took place over the next 20 seconds. My arms got entangled in a lot of twisted material and so I decided to abandon the idea of wearing the extra layer, something I was pleased with later as the temperature really warmed up by the second half. Having said this, I was pleased to have spent the extra 10 seconds putting on a pair of socks, especially as I didn't want my feet cut up on the run leg like they were post London Triathlon. I'll do this at any distance over Olympic in future. I headed out of transition and over the dismount line, hashing up putting my feet into my already clipped in bike shoes as the first 30-40 meters of the bike is uphill... next time I will be running out of transition with my shoes already on... In summing up the bike course I would state "the whole 2 lap 90km course is relentlessly up or down, with hardly any flat sections", and by lap two there was a noticeable number of riders blowing up who had underestimated the 1,500m ascent throughout. By the end of the second bike lap we were catching some of the wave 2 Gauntlet starters who were nearing the end of their first lap, and I swear that one woman shouted "Sod off!" when I gave her encouragement whilst overtaking on one of the many hills. I was a fight to keep my average speed at 30kmph, my pre-race target, however pleasingly I managed to do consistent 45km laps with my two lap times being within 39 seconds of each other (1:31:04 & 1:31:43) for a total bike time of 3:04.
STRAVA: https://www.strava.com/activities/724639296
 |
| Bike course profile |
RUN - Out of T2 and up the first hill on the two lap 10.5km course I realised my run legs had been left at home... I had picked up a hand bottle of Caffeine High 5 fluid (my own), plus a few gels, all of which were consumed early on meaning I actually started feeling better on the second half of the run. I did not realise that the run course was going to be that much off-road.. trails, narrow paths, farm fields, grass and some gravel paths were interspersed with only about 400m of tarmac in total, and like the bike route, the run route was hardly flat the whole way round. I got passed by the winner of the event just before my lap 2 started, calculating that he was on for a 4:30 finish, a superb time considering the winner the year before was a 4:50. With a lot of Olympic distance runners out on the run course there were plenty of targets to keep the mind focused, and before long the run was nearly over and I was heading into the finish. It was wonderful to see my wife and son Sebastian (the first time he has ever 'seen' me finish a race!), around 100m from the line, and i felt compelled to stop and give them both a quick kiss, meaning I had to sprint the last 50m to keep at bay the athlete who had sniffed an opportunity to overtake a fellow athlete dawdling in the finishing chute... I was pleasantly surprised to cross the line in 5:22, a time gave me 21st overall, and 5th in the 40-44 age category.
STRAVA: https://www.strava.com/activities/724639159
 |
| Run profile |
Link to all 2016 Gauntlet Half Ironman results can be found here : http://www.stuweb.co.uk/race/1et/
 |
| Sebastian with Daddy's medal |
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