National Relays 2009

Everyone has a bad race from time to time, some even have a string of events go wrong for me I have had a season of disappointing results. It is somewhat my fault for not saying no a lot of the time. My rest days have been nonexistant and my days have become longer. In true blame culture though it's not my fault but everyone else's for asking!

As you can probably guess after Prague I have been down and working through a few issues. How did I come to waste a whole season. So what, there is still time to salvage a few good results. Starting with a hard earned anger race at the Relays. With RAF Lincoln going head to head once again with the Super Lincs. Well it was an exciting race to watch especially as we also had a race with the other closely matched RAF team.

Granty lead of with a good swim and managed to exit the water ahead of Lincoln and just behind the other RAF team who were "Lost in Transition" able to find me quickly in the super blue suit I was of an taking people quickly bringing us back into contention as we opened up a sizable lead on the other teams. Passing to Doug who in turn passed on to Westy who is currently shaping himself into a very good Triathlete, all he has to do is work on his swim and then there is no chance of catching him.

Granty was out on the bike and caught by lap 3 as Lincoln closed the gap down. The other RAF team at this point were behind by 5 minutes who once again were "Lost in Transition". Of I go and within a lap the Army open had caught and passed me, sorry Lapped me on the bike. Managing to keep Lincoln in sight I followed for 3 laps and passed to Doug who set of on fire ad managed to not loose anymore time than necessary. However the gap to RAF 2 seemed to drop slightly.

With Westy on top biking form that soon changed as he and Jase went head to head on the laps. The little power pony had no chance against the stampeding horse that is Westy on a bike. With everything left to the run as predicted it was going to be a close run effort. Granty gave it all, I went at it like it was a 2k run and realised it was further than it looked when I was on the bike. In fact I should have realised how far it was as I was one of the team to put all the 5k of Nautine fencing during the week. Doug had a great run and Westy cruised it home in front of RAF 2 and just behind the Lincoln Boys.

The Army were on top form finishing in 5th in both Open nd Vet male as well as 3rd female as was Mat Stephenson who as the weaker member of the BRAT Vet team and helped them to secure an comfortable victory.

This now leads me to one thing.....Who's in for next years RAF team. I am thinking that we could have the team of teams the Fighter boys, Westy, Jase, Dale and Greg. Head to head with the Memorial Boys or Vets (they talk a lot about the old days) Sags, Daz, Mat and Fish as well as a few other good teams to throw into the mix like the Auxiliaries. I already know that the ladies would like to have a vets team and with Bev going on top form this would be a great send of for her.