Course Spotting For Warwick Tri
After the drive down to Tall Friend’s house (grotty traffic), I arrived just after 2pm. So after the usual ‘Hellos’ and unloading the car, we went for a walk around the park for ice creams & to exercise Tall Friend’s dogs (bouncy, bouncy creatures). It was one of those sunny but not hot days, but the park was full of kids, playing in the fountains, on the swings, and on the climbing frames. Sometimes I wish I was eight years old!
Anyway, once we all got back to the house, Tall Friend’s Wife took their eight-month old son off to the shops to score us some dessert, and we headed off to have a look at the bike course for the race.
Stopping off in Warwick School (school website and location), where the pool, registration and transition was to be based, we followed the whole cycle route, which is basically a 5 mile triangle with a 7 mile out-and-back after you’ve done the first of its three side. That sounded pretty simple in my head, but perhaps this map of the Warwick Triathlon bike course will make things clearer!
The plan was to take things nice and easy - just have a look at the course. Of course things don’t alway work out like that, and we ended up hammering it quite hard - averaging around 18.5 mph.
Tall Friend got a new bike this year in response to me getting Christine. He’s also just upgraded to clipless pedals, now wears track mits, and while we were riding, he was asking about my tri bars - how much speed advantage they give, are the comfortable, can you stay on them for the whole race - simple, non-probing questions like that. This competition thing could be getting serious - have I accidentally started some sort of technological arms race?
Anyway - the course. It’s mostly rolling countryside - a series of 50-125ft hills, with mostly great road surfaces. It’s the kind of ideal countryside for those long Sunday morning rides, where as you steam along, you take plenty of time to look at the scenery. There are seven roundabouts in all, which is less good, but only the last two look like being properly busy - right next to a retail park. Oh, and the fourth, where you rejoin the triangle section of the course, is linked to a major junction on the motorway, and you turn right (i.e. most of the way round, moving across the traffic) on it.
It was well worth the ride out, because some of the hills are a little deceptive - you get to spend lots of time on the big chainring (because of all the little descents), but on some of the climbs, you do need to be on the small one. Having ridden the course, we’d had the opportunity to get the correct gears dialed in. Mind you, tt’d be a really fun route to try to ride on a fixie . . .
Workout:
- Type: Cycle
- Date: 09/08/2007
- Time: 16:00:00
- Total Time: 1:00:00.00
- Distance: 14 miles
- Average Speed: 14 mph
