Bath Amphibians Triathlon Club

So, back in action at the weekend and this time it was the 4th Helly Hansen Adventure Race of the winter season that had fallen victim to the wrath of the ‘Phibs.  Two teams: the Boys and the Girls.  And if anyone involved is completely honest, they were each other’s main rivals.  Forget the other 300-odd teams.   

Just to give you a flavour of how different it was from the last time the Phibs chicks strolled away victorious - the format had to be changed by bolting the two mountain bike loops together, to give them more time to crack the ice on the canal and as we stood around chatting instead of listening to the race brief, it started to snow!

The Girls

The Amphibs Girls had tipped themselves as favourites for the female win, having won the previous race in October (by a small margin) and also having taken out their main competitors by poaching top Adventure racer, Charlotte Maurissen. Everything was going smoothly with Char, Streety and Kez making it to the start line on time and all bikes intact.

The race started with a 4ish-km run, which was frantic from the outset and riddled with forestry obstacles.  The girls were going strong and looked to come into transition ahead of the other girls’ teams.  More importantly, they appeared to get out of transition before the Amphibs Boys!

Kez was first out onto the one and only mountain-bike leg of the race, knowing it would be a matter of minutes before Char and Streety would catch up.  With the 3-strong team re-united, the 2-lap course went frightfully smoothly.  It must’ve been those two recent muddy-as-hell Sunday training rides that made the Pirbright route feel like a couple of laps at Castle Combe.  That said, lap 2 got a bit hairy when the speed-demons caught up with the 1st-time lappers and a few sudden-stops on uphill sections of those in front certainly didn’t concur with health and safety regs. Nevertheless, the girls came into T2 together and in one piece and it was Streety 1st out this time, setting the run pace.

Char and Kez soon caught up and that’s when the good news came in.  There were the Boys on their bikes.  Still.  Ha! The Girls, boosted by this, ran strongly to the canal where the kayak section kicked in.  Again a good bit of team-work had Char and Streety powering away up the front and Kez chilling in the back seat steering the vessel.  Safely round the frozen loop and back onto the run, then came the cheers from the awesome support crew of SJ, Georgina and Ads’ Mum - the home stretch seemed all the more doable.  With Kez setting the pace and Char bringing up the rear (though far from being a hindrance to the team!), the finish line was soon in view - just a few obstacles to conquer first.

With the Geneva Airport check-in-queue-style plank walking fiasco over, then came the cargo net - probably not the most elegant exhibition of the day.  But the heavily greased near-vertical wall was a piece of cake.  In true Amphibs style, Streety threw her two team-mates up before throwing herself over.  Head first down the other side and over the finish line.  First female team - sweet result.  Beating the Boys, even sweeter?!

The Boys

The Amphibs boys had not tipped themselves as favourites, not even their mums would have entertained such a ridiculous idea and to be fair, Mike was even pretty convinced before the start that the ladies would have the measure of them - defeatist or just realist? Check out the result to help you with that one.  However, Mike and Adam had also poached a team member and also one whose very name would strike fear into the hearts of most triathletes, former pro and all round - been there, done that and used the t-shirt to de-grease his bike - Duncan McKerracher.  Of course Duncan was relying on pedigree combined with about 3 hrs worth of training in the last 6 to 12 months to be sufficient to hand it to the girls…

The lads had a pretty good start, having agreed to take it as cheekily as was required to stay in the lead pack and get to T1 before the masses of irritating London media types rocked up and spoiled everything by riding around like they had their diary produce in their shopping basket.  Anyway, back to the run.  Cheeky it was and Dunc was already hoping that this whole thing was a about an hour and a half of effort as he put himself into a painful little room and locked the door.

The boys came into T1 at pretty much the same time as the girls - so far not so good.  We might not have had a plan as such, but any we had was ‘beat the girls’ so this wasn’t going according to plan.  The boys were eventually away after a pretty amateurish transition and started to over take as many muppets as they could, whenever the track was wide enough to do so.  About 4 minutes into the ride, Adam got a flat and despite the super slick team effort in getting the new tube in and wheel back on (record timing to be fair) the boys still had to watch a parade of numpties come past them, some of whom chipped in with helpful comments such as ‘oooh, puncture’ and that sort of thing.  Having cooled down enough to start to feel stiff, it was back in the saddle and off to claw our way back through the pack like a wild beast was chasing us.  Dunc climbed like a demon, Ads kept pulling and pulling, Mike swore, tutted and gave everyone filthy looks but the damage was done, we just had too many idiots to get passed.

The second technical came in the form of Mike’s front wheel all but coming off. A degree of sabotage the night before from Streety is suspected but at least highlights how much it meant to the girls.  Flushed from this near death experience, the lads cracked on as only Amphibs know how and tried (in vain as it turned out) to claw their way back through the pack of total idiots (again).  The third technical - Adam’s crank coming loose, put the boys team so far behind the girls and so embedded in the 1st lap of the Fat Dad Wave and still behind many second lappers in the Irritating London Media Types Wave, that way before they came into transition, the girlies cruised past in the other direction on foot, looking the exact opposite of them - strong, dominant and having a good time.  It’s not possible to list how many examples of stupidity and lack of nuts we witnessed, but trust me - it was epic.

All three boys were happy to be off the bike (and amazed to have finished without stabbing someone with a multi tool) and almost looking forward to the run to the Kayak section, but cramp, general and all over body pain and quite probably a desire to kill Mike and Adam, meant that Dunc had left his best running in the first 4k (if you don’t include when he used to do this for a living and destroy everyone on fairly minimal training). As we left T2, we realised to our absolute horror, that we were in the ‘well done, you can do it group’.  I’ve nothing against people ‘taking part’ but I never again want to be in that group.  The boys were now so far behind the girls that in a perverse twist, the race started to become enjoyable again,  just because it was actually quite funny.  Fortunately Dunc was managing to keep his humour too and took the kayak section as an opportunity to stretch his legs out at the front to alleviate the cramp.  This was all fine and well but despite a way better than average paddling action from the men, we were all sat so far back that Adam got a wet arse from the icy canal every time we put the left paddle in.  In fact it’s fair to say that we were basically sinking.  This focused the mind and we rammed people out the way to get home and dry(ish) and crack on with the last bit of the run.

Cheering us into the finish was a showered, lunched, massaged and thoroughly well rested girls team, who at least got to see that the boys knew a thing or two about stupid plank walking and wriggling their way under cargo nets.  Mike and Ads launched the Cracker up the wall before launching themselves up it and down the other side to the finish. Placing unknown and I think we’d like to keep it that way.  Thanks to the girls for being such gracious winners and well done for smashing it up even more emphatically than the VO2 boys do in the mens race.  10 mins on their nearest rivals makes them peerless.  Sweet work.