When I decided to get into triathlon, the first bike I bought was a £700 Wilier Escape with an 18-speed Campagnolo Xenon groupset.  After a while, I spent a few pennies upgrading the wheels (Campag Scirocco, I seem to recall) until a few years later the groupset found its way onto an Argon18 frame and the old Wilier frame went to a friend to become the basis of a fixie.

With a handful of unused holiday from 2017 that I had until the end of March to take, I headed out last week to the warmer climes of Mallorca for a few days ‘solo training camp’, otherwise known as the ‘cycling on my new bike and doing the bare minimum of running and no swimming’ camp.

I guess when it takes you six months to update your blog, you should really be questioning why you still have it at all!  But surprisingly (to me, anyway), I do still get the odd mail and social media message from people kind enough to let me know that they’ve found previous posts and advice articles useful.

THIS BLOG IS ALSO AVAILABLE ON THE NEW VERSION OF THIS WEBSITE: https://www.triathletediary.com/blog/ironman-70-3-weymouth-2017-race-report

This blog should really be titled “learn from my mistakes”.  As you will see, even a ‘seasoned’ triathlon Age Grouper can still make a total mess of their race.  So I write this with no small dose of humility or embarrassment; but hopefully if you read this you might be able to have a more successful day yourself.

So, if you read my blogs you’ll know that the decision to race Weymouth 70.3 was taken after a bit of a disaster at the Cotswold Classic triathlon, where I allowed a puncture at 70km to get into my head and ruin the race, leading to a DNF.   I was determined I was going to finish a middle-distance triathlon in 2017!

So, once again, I’ve left it too long between updates.  Although the definition of ‘too long’ is something of an assumption on my part!

In May I was chuffed to at least be a ‘multisport’ athlete again.   I had managed to finish (albeit unspectacularly) a small local duathlon.