Upon arrival at Dorney Lake there was a short walk to the Event Village where there was plenty to keep both competitors and spectators busy; physio tent, bike, wetsuit and Garmin hire and a huge food tent dishing out BBQ food from the main sponsor Lidl.

Registration was painless and after sorting out my race numbers it was time to rack my bike in transition. Transition was well laid out and marshals on hand to tell you what row you were on and every position was marked by race number. As there were 16 separate waves between 0830 and 1245 transition was live and this was a bit of a faff with people organising kit whilst racers were transitioning, I shouted at someone who had left a bag in the middle of the path during T1.

I was in the Whole Banana that consisted of 800m swim, 31.8km bike and 7.5km run which was the longest offering of the day. The swim was a 2 lap course that started with a deep water start and there were plenty of canoeists on hand to point out when you were straying off course as I did a few times. Swim exit was easy and well marshalled and had rubber matting and carpet underfoot although my race partner managed to cut his foot and end his race early.

The bike course was 6 laps of the external track surrounding both lakes and although almost completely flat got a bit monotonous after a few laps especially as it was quite exposed to the wind in stretches. As there were so many different races going on simultaneously it was hard to distinguish who you were actually racing against. On my 6th lap I took the left fork into transition and due to the slight downhill and lack of signage I approached the dismount line at speed and managed to perform a spectacular endo-dismount before entering T2.

Transition was a lot calmer now as all races were either underway or finished. Again the run was multi-lap and consisted of 3 out and backs along the same path with 2 aid stations no route so I'd pass an aid station 6 times in 7.5km. The aid stations were serving water and energy drinks in cups along side Zipvit gels (I'm not a fan of Zipvit gels due to the thick consistency). On my 3rd and final lap the organisers had set up a sprinkler system fed from the lake, this was very welcome as it was a very warm day although it could have been done earlier.

After the 3rd lap there was a short sprint to the finish to enjoy a well deserved Erdinger Alkoholfrei, some bananas and the BBQ.

Overall this was a well run event as expected from Human Race Events it just struggles in it's uniqueness due to the common multi-lap format but it makes up for this with a splenid venue in Dorney lake and a great spectators area.