The Perfect Weekend

The perfect Weekend

Phew!!! What a busy week it had been - Alison & Andy finally left the office for their weekend off at half past midnight on Friday night having still had buyers calling in at 10.00PM!

Andy has entered the Llanberis Half Ironmaan Triathlon which will take place in September so since February he's been busy preparing and on Saturday Andy was all set to compete in his first triathlon near Chester.

The whole family finally set out by late morning complete with bike wetsuits etc in lovely sunny weather. On arriving at the venue there was already plenty of fit looking athletes with expensive looking racing bikes preparing themselves for the race. After finding out where the course went, where to leave equipment in the transition area and doing a bit of last minute checking up on the actual rules, start time approached and it was time to don all the swimming kit for the 750 metre swim around a pretty murky clay pit/boating lake.

You might not recognise Andy on the left here, but don't you think he was looking confident?!

The photo above shows some swimmers getting ready for the start and the first of 4 orange buoys to swim around can be seen in the distance.

The swim lasted about 14 minutes for Andy. Photo on the left shows he came out looking not too bad. Competitors than ran to the transition area to get changed ready for the 13km bike ride.

Andy is the guy in the photo on the right nearly passing out on the ground fighting his way out of the wetsuit.

Finally after about a 2 minutes he was on the bike at last.

It was then out onto the roads for about 30 minutes.
and then back to the transition area to get changed for the run around the lake.

A quick change into running shoes and in seconds he was sprinting up the course.

2 Minutes later and both legs were completely locked up with cramp. Ouch!! That wasn't meant to happen but you try doing these things in succession and your legs probably won't like it either.

After a bit of stretching and swearing, Andy was off again working his way up the field and making up lots of places.

That's a bit more like it! Sprint for the line man it'll all be over soon

.........and it was in a time of 1hr 10 mins 16seconds!

After the race the Red Bull promotional reps were busy giving away free cans to the competitors and George and Charlie took full advantage of the give aways and got extra fill ups.

That night Andy and Alison donned their glad rags and it was then around to neighbours for dinner.

At 3.30am it was time to leave Steve's house and pop around to another next door neighbours, appropriately named Dawn for more wine and crisps!

The Red Bull still didn't wear off and at about 7am Andy, Jess and Wynne (the local removal specialist) hopped onto their mountain bikes and pedaled off to Pensarn Yacht Club for a sail in Andy's Dinghy (kindly donated by a satisfied and happy customer who moved inland last year). There was a nasty couple of minutes when Andy realised he'd forgotten the rudder but with a minor act of Piracy we found one to "borrow" off another small boat.

It was quite a surreal voyage, with everyone hazy from tiredness (or was it the wine/Stella Artois?). The sea was a little bouncy in the rip at the mouth or the Afon Artro and Wynne christened the headland "The Cape of Shell Island". By the time we had perfected our tacking we took the boat back up the beach and must have appeared to be a rather motley crew, disembarking back onto the beach after a sleepless night and still wearing "Saturday night gear". By about 10am we were all ready to pedal off home and grab a few hours sleep.