I competed in the Olympic Distance on the Saturday and this was my first Olympic Distance Triathlon. Initially I was hugely disappointed with the bike route as previous years have taken in the sights of London but later learnt that this was due to road works on the Embankment so totally out of the organisers hands.
Registration was seamless, my race number and pack came in the post a few weeks in advance and that just left a timing chip to collect on the day, before racking in the biggest transition area I've ever seen. The transition rows were the width of the exibition hall and identified by a letter. There were so many they ran out of letters and had to start again with AA!
There was a small room showing the course briefing on a big screen on loop, so you could take this in whenever. And at the swim meeting area there was another short safety brief.
The swim was in the Royal Victoria Dock and the water was deep and dark. As London City Airport was at the end of the dock there was a taste of fuel in the water that wasn't pleasant. On the Saturday the 1500m Olympic swim was two laps of the Sprint swim but on the Sunday it was it's own longer lap. I'd have prefered a single lap I think. Coming out of the swim there were plenty of marshals and safety on hand, one even offered to undo my suit which was nice. Once up the exit ramp you were handed a plastic bag in which to put your wesuit before heading back intoThe ExCel and up some rather slippy stairs to T1. As mentioned transition was huge and the trot to my bike carrying my bagged wetsuit seemed to take forever.
Once I had completed T1 and collected my bike the trot to the bike mount line was short and sweet and I was away out of the ExCel and onto the course. Again this was a shorter course than Sunday and was 4 laps rather than 2. And that meant that you had to tackle a rather horrible flyover 4 times as well as 8 tight turns around roundabouts at each end of the route, where one extra keen competitor tried to squeeze past me on the left so close we shared sweat! The girl behing chimed in with "you pass on the right, idiot!". The roads weren't always as smooth as I'd like and there were 3 sets of rumble strips that unless you were on the far right gave your bones a good shaking. There was sporadic support along the route and most people were silently watching until their athlete came past. On my 4th lap I took the left turn back into the ExCel and up the ramp which felt like Col du Toumalet, I was out of the saddle and pumping just to get to the top. Off the bike and into T2 where to save vital seconds I opted to skip the socks for the run, this was to turn out to be a bad idea.
As per the rest of the course this was a multi-lap affair with 4 laps of a 2.5km course returning up another awful ramp into the ExCel at the end of each lap. The course was pretty boring and quite unimaginative but the charity cheerers, DJ and the public were a welcome lift. I sang along with Bon Jovi, The Fresh Prince and MC Hammer when passing the DJ booth much to the dismay of my fellow runners. There was also a water spray on the course that you passed twice on each out and back lap as well as a water station and a fuel station handing out maximuscle gels, which I stayed away from after my lucozade gel experience at London Marathon. Nothing new on race day! Every lap saw you coming back into the ExCel and around a huge inflatable Erdinger bottle befor heading back down the ever steepening ramp for another lap. On my final lap I turned right onto the red carpet and sprinted for home the compere calling out my name as I crossed the line in 3:11 to recieve my medal and well earned Alkoholfrei Erdinger beer.
After waiting for my friend and competitor, Neil, we mooched around the show hoovering up the various free nutrition products and visiting Rob on the Kitbrix stand and retrieving our bikes from transition. On our way out we bought race t-shirts at £21 each, personally I'd like to see these included in the price or at least sold at cost.
All in all it was a very well organised event as you'd expect with an event of this magnitude. I enjoyed most of it and my only gripes would be the lack of imagination in the run course, the bike course was seemingly out of the organisers control, and, the lack of t-shirt. On a final note I recieved my result by text that evening but it was well out from my Garmin and I can only guess that I was put in the wave ahead as my swim time has an extra 5 mins on it.