Waterborn’s Beach Bedlam
I must admit I wasn’t prepared for the second instalment of Waterborn’s mini summer series, a Battle of the Paddle style race down at South Milton Sands, but glad there could be a slight delay of the start time to correspond with getting to it in time after work. The series itself was due to encourage various fancy dress situations but not to put off people if they didn’t want to dress up, I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to dig out a costume or two though. The theme this time was ‘brightly coloured beachwear’, right up my street. I got out my Pacifico Paddle event top from St. Pete’s beach in Florida, dug out my florescent headband and wrist bands from the 1st year I did the 11 cities prologue and this year’s green starboard team shorts, that ought to do the trick!! 
By the last few trips of work I wasn’t feeling much in a racing mood but was looking forward to the race none the less. I buzzed down to South Milton and issued a health warning to people to shield their eyes from the glare of my outfit, being ever considerate like that. Thankfully I wasn’t the only one to dress up and Ollie O’Reilly, Pete Everitt and Jocelyn Jones all stepped up and donned some fairly bright gear. The race itself was a 1 design race using 10’8 mega’s with 2 piece adjustable paddles to give everyone the same equipment and level the playing field. We started with a beach start up by the flag with our paddles, ran down to our boards and headed out to the first marker, anti-clockwise turn back to a shore marker in the surf zone clockwise, back out to a fixed boat lane buoy clockwise, then back to the first marker clockwise and back into the beach for a beach transition, round the flag and repeat for 4 laps. Im not sure if you’ve ever been on one of the 10’8 mega’s but they’re not overly efficient at either speed, direction or surfing however they are remarkably stable and you can move around easily and thus turns are fairly easy and without too much loss of speed. 
I got a great start off the line matching hitting the water with Ollie and James Mc’Ging, Ollie pulled ahead and got to the first mark just ahead of James and I had to go around the outside of him in order to make the turn, James wobbled and ended up pushing into my board, I was half way through a committed step back turn and with the swell ended up failing in the water, not happy! I grabed my glasses which were bobbing beside me and leaped back up onto my board, I sorted myself out and got back into a rhythm and desperately tried to catch as many runners and possible back into towards the shore marker.
The lilo bobbing around and catching the nose under the wave and generally being fairly inefficient but managed to pull back into 3rd place. I managed to catch James as he made a mistake heading into the beach and missing a marker and now just had Ollie in my sights as I tried hard to make the board work for me. A quick sprint up the beach and back I launched onto the board ready for lap 2/4, I had made up a small amount of ground on Ollie but it was going to be hard work to catch him let alone pass, now though the markers were clear for clean turns, or so I thought, the tail end of the people coming in from their first lap meant that every now and then the marks were still congested which gave me hope of catching Ollie, he could fall or get pushed wide on a mark and it might be enough or a good runner on the into beach sections might just clinch it, unfortunately the rest of the race pretty much stayed about the same distance, gaining ground on some sections but then losing ground on the beach transitions, curse my running!!!
Ollie took a well-deserved 1st place, Myself in 2nd and James Mc’Ging in 3rd, Christine Anderson taking 1st in the ladies with Jocelyn Jones coming 2nd. It was a good race with plenty to be learned, Thanks to waterborn for setting up the event and to Tri Ocean and Herring shoes for the prizes donated. The last of the Waterborn series is next week, Friday 29th August and is Military themed. Thanks to #Starboard #Tushingham #Teapigs #OnitPro for all their support! My next race is at Eton Dorney Olympic rowing lake for the National Club Championships this Saturday, Whoop Whoop!!!
