Catriona Morrison

I love this race. It’s like your favourite wooly jumper or pair of cozy socks! Friendly, round the corner, familiar and fun. I have not compared the splits from years gone by but I think that this year I may have been as fast as previous attempts and given my return from injury this bodes well :-). The weather was even pretty respectable!

Getting ready for the start of the Southern Uplands Sportive.

It was time: time to test out the knee and the heart and lungs and the racing head. On Saturday I did the Scottish Standard Distance Triathlon Champs at Gullane. A typically wet and windy day with the added bonus of a sea swim full of thousands of nasty slimy stingy jellyfish! Rough water and cold temperatures are never a good start to a race so I was not in the best frame of mind by the time I climbed the mountain slopes to T1. Out on the bike things were slow to start. I would go as far as admitting that they did not seem to start at all. Or at least the engine was going but I did not seem to have any turbo charge – probably just as well with the price of diesel being as high as it is right now! I’d never experienced the delicacies of Gullance before and the moutainous theme continued onto the run with a grunty X-country epic to round the race off. I finished, no knee pain and in pretty good shape so mission accomplished for the day. I guess I am just a little dissapointed that I did not have as much fire in the belly as I would have liked. However, Scottish Champion for 2008 :-)

However, lack of fireworks on Saturday appears to have been a good thing as I must have been stoking the embers in preparation for the Southern Uplands Sportive today. I had signed up for the 40mile “baby radar” route but given that I was feeling OK after yesterday I was able to swap into the 105 mile event instead. The course starts in Scotland’s highest village and finishes at 725m following a 9mile climb – me likes climbs! After a steady first 40 miles my pee stop was rudely interupted by a fast bunch whizzing past. Keen not to miss out on a good honest draft, I time trialled hubby Richard and myself back up to the speedy group (I’d say the TT effort was 70:30 in my favour). Everything was going well, including summiting a 20% mean mean climb at about 50 miles. Nearing the bottom I punctured and could only watch as the bunch raced into the distance. Back onto the road again and another joint TT effort and we managed to grab onto another group and get some through and off going to lead us up to the next climb. At this point Richard’s bottom lip was wibbling and his back was feeling the distance. I grabbed the car key and put my head down finally catching back up to some of the fast blokes who had dropped back at the feed station. Very good news for me! 20miles to go and mostly all up hill. By the top of the second last hill there was only one bloke left on my wheel and with the last 5km climb beckoning, I made sure that I was the one to catch. I think that I finished first woman – results will be at http://www.sus8events.com soon. The weather was perfect, the event route was beautiful and all the volunteers and staff were super friendly. This was my first sportif and based on the experience, I’d be up for another.

Now I have my fingers crossed to see how the knee feels tomorrow…..

It has been a relaxed week of training in preparation for a new four week block and it means that I have had a little spare time do do fun stuff like a photo shoot, Saturday morning radio (sports weekly: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml?http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/scotland_promo.shtml), and attend a tax workshop (although that was not so much fun!). Next week I have the Gullane triathlon and a 50 mile sportif to look forward to. Two tests to see how the knee is doing and hopefully put me in a better postiton to plan some bigger profile races for later this year.