Was up early on a Sunday morning to walk over the island to be a Marshall on the run course of the Sprint Triathlon. It was apparently the third race in the super sprint series, and an Age Group qualifier for the European Sprint Championships.
I reported in at the transition area in the main car park, collected my Hi-Vis and goody bag and headed out to my Marshall spot. We had been given What Three Words locations and mine was on the corner where they turned off Friar's Point back down towards the prom. It gave me a bird's eye view of the swim phase.
It was a lovely sunny day but quite breezy. The 750m swim started at 7.00am, and was a triangular course around two buoys out in Whitmore Bay. There were lots of safety boats and kayakers, which was just as well as the wind direction was not with the swimmers on any of the legs, and at least 6 contestants had to be rescued early as they couldn't make it against the wind around the first buoy. The lead swimmers had finished in 10 minutes. The final swimmer, who had been doing breast stroke, took just under an hour.
The bike course took them out and back along Ffordd y Millennium, back into transition, and then onto two laps of a run course along the prom, halfway along the causeway and back, up onto Friar's Point and back down to the finish by Transition. The lack of a detailed briefing meant I only knew it was two laps not one when I saw the leaders go through for the second time. A guy on a bike did come to check on me during the race, and confirmed that the final runner had finished so I was free to collect my T-shirt and head home. There were cameras on motorbikes when the leaders went through so I'm going to watch out for it in mid July on S4C.
