As most of you are aware, I work for Mercedes AMG PETRONAS F1. Sunday the 14th of July saw a battle royale off the race track as we swapped horse power for people power at the Blenheim triathlon. Mercedes, Force India & Red Bull both fielded 3 relay teams with 3 people per team. Each team had to complete a 750m swim, a 19.8km bike ride and a 5.4km run. Needless to say I did the swim. It isn’t really relevant to my channel training but it is such a great event and encourages us to all work as a team. For those of you who don’t do triathlons or haven’t heard of them, the relays work like this. One person does the swim and they start at the same time as their competitors which can be quite intimidating. Once they have finished the swim they have to run to the transition point where the cyclist is and hand over a timing chip. At which time the cyclist grabs their bike and runs out of transition and once at the mount point they can get on their bike and start peddling. At the end of the bike leg the cyclist rides to transition, dismounts and runs to where the runner is waiting. They rack the bike, take off their helmet and pass the timing chip to the runner. The runner then runs out of transition, does the rest of the run course and crosses the finishing line (hopefully in first place).
Initially it was just going to be a bit of fun, but then, as per usual, the friendly banter started and things started to get competitive. We were also under the impression that we would be in our own wave which meant 9 people starting in the water but as we found out on the day we were in with about 200 other people. This meant the dreaded mass start. I’ve never done an event quite this large so I was actually a little nervous about it. There was a reasonable bit of media attention, nothing like what you see at an F1 race but we were being asked for interviews and had to do promotional pictures before and after the race. Every time we turned round there was a TV camera pointed straight at us, I can only apologise for any images of me in a wetsuit that appear on TV.
Initially it was just going to be a bit of fun, but then, as per usual, the friendly banter started and things started to get competitive. We were also under the impression that we would be in our own wave which meant 9 people starting in the water but as we found out on the day we were in with about 200 other people. This meant the dreaded mass start. I’ve never done an event quite this large so I was actually a little nervous about it. There was a reasonable bit of media attention, nothing like what you see at an F1 race but we were being asked for interviews and had to do promotional pictures before and after the race. Every time we turned round there was a TV camera pointed straight at us, I can only apologise for any images of me in a wetsuit that appear on TV.
After all the nonsense of TV, PA system interviews, photos etc., it was quite a relief to be able to get into the water. I was able to jump in and swim the 50m or so to the start line and get a good position next to one of the start line buoys. I’d picked it as it would give me a straight shot down to the end buoy that I had to turn around and it also meant that no one was next to me. I managed to get a decent start and was able to sprint out of the washing machine of arms that was spinning behind me. I was in 2nd place for the first few minutes until I had to slow. Swimming in a wetsuit is not something I usually do and I started to overheat. It was around this time that I noticed I had one of the boats keeping pace right next to me, A few breaths later, I realised why. There was another TV camera on it, and every time I breathed to my left there it was staring me in the face. Now I don’t like having my photo taken, let alone being filmed, but it is even worse when I’m exercising. I can only hope that my face somehow broke the lens or the director has the good sense not to show me on the TV. I don’t think it would be the prettiest sight and certainly wouldn’t do much for the ratings!