Thorpe Park Sprint Triathlon

6 June 2018 - By James Montgomery

On Sunday, in his final build-up race before Ironman Austria, Lee Pembroke took part in the Thorpe Park Sprint Triathlon. This was a European Championships qualifying event, so potentially with tough opposition.

Registration opened at 5.15am of which meant an very early rise for Lee!

There were nine waves for the 750m open water swim for a field of 672, Lee was off in the fifth wave and was away around 7.30am. His plan was to try and draft some of the faster swimmers for as long as possible and all seemed to be going well until just before the first buoy when he was punched in the back which somewhat winded him. Folllowing a few breastrokes to help get his breathe back Lee was soon back into action and trying to make up some of the lost time, exiting the water in 16.01.

Lee’s woes continued in T1 when in his my attempt to get out of his wet suit he managed to get his watch caught in his sleeve which cost him another 10-20 seconds. Eventually out on to the 20km bike route of which most was flat and gave the perfect opportunity to attack, which Lee took full advantage of having an “angry ride” following his frustrating swim. Lee averaged over 20mph finishing the bike leg in 29.30.

T2 was a bit more straight forward and then out on to the 5km Run which was two lap flat route around Thorpe Park, finishing the run leg in 20.12 giving Lee an overall finish time of 1hr 9mins and 34secs; 19th in his age group and 155th out of 672.

Splits:
Swim:     00:16:01
Bike:       00:29:30
Run:        00:20:12
Overall:  01:09:34