Dave Mawhinney chose Ludlow Sprint Triathlon to finish the triathlon season off. After a good solid bike and run he worked himself up to 2nd in age group and 6th overall, beating many youngsters to boot…

After what seems to have been a long race season, I arrived in Ludlow to take part in my last race, Ludlow sprint triathlon. Ludlow has always been a race close to my heart, as it was my first triathlon 11 years ago when I swam in a pair of cycle shorts and had that soggy nappy feeling on the bike and run!

Having arrived well ahead of my start time (my wife Sarah started 3 hours before me) I had even more faffing time than usual. Being in the second to last wave, I had a good swim with 4 of my wave exiting at about the same time and virtually queuing to get from transition onto the main road for the 16 mile bike ride, me being the fourth rider. After overtaking 2 of the people in front of me, I tried to keep the fourth in reach! We stayed that way for about 12 miles, then on coming around a tight right hand bend, I saw that he had over cooked it and ended up in a stream at the side of the road! Luckily he was standing up and seemed ok as I passed him.

Into transition, after a good ride, I was quickly into the 4 mile run and pushing hard to keep a high run cadence and started to catch people from the previous wave. After reaching the turn around it was back to transition and to the finish. I finished 6th overall, finishing 3 minutes 11 seconds behind the winner out of over 300 finishers – my best ever result at Ludlow.

After 11 years of racing, I thought I’d check out my results from first Ludlow race:

In 2002, at the age of 43, I did my very first triathlon at Ludlow in 1:34:39; this year 1:18:21. My swim time was 10:28; now 7:05 including transition, my bike time was 55:44; now 44:30 and my run time was 28:27; to a spritely 25:53. I finished 89th overall in 2002, so even in my 55th year, I am happy to be still competitive and still enjoying having the buzz from training and racing.

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