Our Zone3 Local Hero Andrew Diplock has continued support throughout 2017.
Andrew updates us on his latest race - 21 May 2017 - Grafman
Andrew at the Grafman finish line
My first race of the season and my inaugural Grafman, the race is hosted at Grafham Water, located in the heart of Cambridgeshire, near the ancient Village of Buckden & St.Neots.
Nicetri always put on great events, I’ve done a few of them now but never Grafman. It was even better than the previous Nicetri events I’ve been to, the atmosphere was incredible!
The cobwebs got well and truly blown off! Here’s how the race unfolded.
Swim - 13:21
You might think that’s a fast half ironman swim! The swim was cut short to 950m due to the baltic waters of Grafham Water. The swim entrance was a bit rocky but I soon found my number one training partner’s feet Mr James Gill, but then after some obligatory tussling with my fellow competitors I lost them just as quickly as I found them! I exited the water in 7th place and quickly made my way to my bike…
T1 - 1:40
I’ll admit, T1 is not my strongpoint. To any bystander they must have wondered what on earth I was up to, standing in front of my bike with my wetsuit still fully zipped in a state of confusion. I think I wasted around one minute trying to get that thing off! I had to race without my Zone3 wetsuit because I discovered a hole in it a few days before and couldn’t get a replacement in time and I’d forgotten how difficult it was to unzip my old one! After a bit of a struggle though I was away on the bike.
Bike - 2:27
After my poor transition I was now down to 11th place. I’ve been working a lot on my biking over the past year and got into a nice rhythm straight away trying to pull back the places I had just lost in T1. I biked hard and managed to get up to 5th place which I was happy with.
There were packs of ~20 people on some parts of the bike course - no doubt a consequence of the swim being cut short. Luckily being near the front of the race meant I was able to stay clear of them.
T2 - 1:02
Much better than T1. I even stopped to put some nice socks on!
Run - 1:25
My best half ironman run yet! I started the run at 4 min/km pace and felt pretty good. A few guys came flying past me and I didn’t even attempt to go with them as I just wanted to run my own race and avoid any surging. The wheels started to come off around 15km into the run and I think my pace dropped by around 25 secs per km for the last 4-5 kms. If I can hold it all together in the final few kms at my next race I’ll be happy with that!
Overall - 4:09 (7th place)
Very happy with the overall result. I managed my nutrition a lot better in this race than I have done previously - it turns out percy pigs are my rocket fuel!
We look forward to Andrew’s updates throughout the season
Next up - Outlaw Holkham 2 July 2017