Triathlon des Lacs d’Aube (Troyes) – L distance (2.7k/83k/21k) – June 4rd 2017
Race reporter: Chmou
On Sunday 4 of June I was near the Lac de L’Aube around 25km west of Troyes to do an approximate distance of a standard L or half ironman distance.
The approximation for the L distance here is because the distances are different from the standard L which usually has a swim/bike/run of 1.9k/90k/21k, this one was more like 2.7k/83k/21k.
When I saw two weeks ago that I had the week-end free and that it was only a short drive from Paris I sent an email to the organizer to see if there was still entries available (since it was announced as sold out) and I was able to convinced Benji and David to get into this.
Benji and myself decided to sleep near Troyes instead of driving early by the race morning so we can get some good sleep before the relative late start of 11AM.
After a 2 hours and half drive and a pasta filled lunch we went to pick
up our bibs and watch the podium for the S distance. The weather that day was pretty bad with a big rain and the lake and its 2.7km of swimming was looking scary (at least for very bad swimmer like me).
A good night sleep and a hotel style breakfast buffet full of proteins (and flans!!!! for benj) we then were the first by the transition area to start setting up our bikes and ‘things’.
By that time David (left with daughter Charlie) arrived with his family just in time so we can take a club picture. It was nice for me to meet David since he’s the other one from the club doing the Ironman Frankfurt in July.
The swim was a mass start and it was a difficult one for me, I am used to get the people punching you or grabbing your legs by now but this time it was a bit of panic and went by the left to avoid most people and recovered from a bad time where my lungs got filled with water.
The end was long, very long and lonely. You know those lonely times where you mind getting filled with bad thoughts of DNFing. One of the main thing that kept me going and not giving up is to think that I had a race report to write for Karen and the ExpaTRIates blog and could not bare to write one about how a thousands stupid excuses for DNFing.
T1 done with only a few bike left in the transition I started cycling to hope to catch up with people. Since the cycling was three loops by the time I was doing my first one the pros were already passing me for their second loops. I had quite a bit of good cycling training this year since January but I was nowhere able to do the 45/50kh those guys were doing on this looks full of rolling hills and “faux plats”. 
By my third loop I already passed a lot of people and kept going strong to finish with an average of 31kh, my tummy wasn’t feeling good probably with all the water I had when swimming and after t2 I was worried if I was going to do a “Paula Radcliff” during my run.
I started the run very slowly (5’30/6’) waiting that my tummy ache was going away and only after the second loop after drinking cocas and burping I was feeling better. I started chatting with some guy from Ivry triathlon and convinced him we should do a strong finish ! so then we went and hit 4’45/4’40/4’30 on the last kilometers sprinting to join benji to the finish line.
It was difficult but since it was more of a preparation race before the full Ironman in July for me, I wasn’t worried about my performance. I did pass 150 people between the end of the swimming and the finish line and really not DNFing when you kept thinking about it during the 3km of Swimming was the true victory here.
A nice dinner in a very nice place in Sens on the way to Paris and I was back home in a very accomplished week-end feeling.
