Race report : Bouzigues Cross Triathlon (S : 700m / 15km MTB / 4.5km)
Short version : That went well, stinking hot, photos below.
Long version:
I really like cross triathlon. Especially at shorter distances it’s so much more fun to do a decent MTB loop on singletrack/doubletrack than to just go there and back on some dull road. As it’s a proper race, the bike and run courses I’ve done have never been super technical gnarr, as the organisers know that people will be going full pelt everywhere, which makes them a great option for people who want to have a go, and a really fun race.
One of our local clubs (Loupian Tri Nature) have organised cross tris and swim runs for a few years. The last two years were cancelled due to covid, and I didn’t do the year before (2019 - when the race was also the French Cross Triathlon Championships), so I was pretty happy that it ran this year, despite the numbers being quite low - 50-something people on the M and 81 on the S. Other years it’s been double that.
Bouzigues is quite a large, pretty village on the north side of the Etang de Thau, opposite the port of Séte on the Mediterrean coast. It’s really a fishing village, but dedicated almost entirely to oyster cultivation in the étang.
The structures you can just see are frames for oysters - they have a system where they raise and lower the oysters to mimic tides.
Anyway, I was signed up for the S - after doing an M at Salagou a few weeks before I didn’t feel like doing a long (for me race), especially as the extra loop on the MTB course didn’t add much interest, and the run would have been two loops. One and finish seemed much easier to handle after slogging round two at Salagou.
The M started at 9h, and the S at 9h30, with the same bike park opening time for both - this meant that after installing everything I had time to watch the M start and have a good swim warmup.
Bike:
Start beach and finish arch:
I managed to do a good warmup - starting steady and putting in some harder efforts. Despite it being a large lagoon, the water was really clear (not like the muddy étangs closer to Montpellier) , and very calm. No-one had said anything about temperature so I kept the wetsuit. I think it was around 23°C, but I need all the help I can get in the water.
The swm went very well. I’ve been working a lot on swimming more continuously, and stayed doing crawl for pretty much the whole 700m loop - only doing a bit of breaststroke around the first buoy to get my bearings on the second, and the shape of the hills behind for sighting. I’m really pleased with managing to swim so consistantly. It’s something that I think should be talked about more for relatively new swimmers like myself - the majority of training plans and coaching sessions are all interval based, which is superb for developing technique, but does not give experience in swimming continuously for longer distances in open water. There was a blog post from Swim SMooth (that seems to have vanished now) that talked about this, and gave a progression to build up, basically alternating sessions with more and more shorter intervals (50, 75, 100…) and then a session with fewer but longer intervals (200, 300, 400 … up to 1000m). This has been very useful for me. Watch time for the swim was just over 17 minutes - and it’s the first time I’ve done less than 2mins/100m in a race (1:59/100m !!).
That’s without a long run up the beach too. Here’s me stopping my watch
However, two unexpected side-effects of swimming better… It appears that I veer to the right quite a lot, so I need to work on sighting more than every 3/4 breaths and/or follow feet a bit more effectively… even though it’s much less stressful swimming to the side of the group the whole way. Also, I really felt the effects of a solid swim effort when coming into transition and starting the bike. Nothing startling, but I was very glad of the flat first couple of kms.
First corner after the mount line:
No other bike photos, but course maps are here if you’re interested
This was just before 10h, and it was already touching 30°C. I’d taken one big bottle (counting on about an hours bike) and seen that the course alternated singletrack and doubletrack all the way round… but the majority of doubletrack wasn’t quite the smooth fireroads I was expecting. I managed to eat a gel at around 7km as planned, but did not manage to drink as often as hoped - I only went through 360ml of a 610ml bottle. Despite this, I mananged to keep the effort pretty constant, and stay focused enough to dodge the bigger rocks. The course really was good,. Fast, rocky natural trails. A few of the M riders overtook on the final parts - blowing past at about twice my speed.
I suspect it’s a lot harder to control effort on the MTB - there’s a minimum speed you need to carry to keep going over rocky sections, and a lot more spikes in effort, unlike road bike tris where you can choose your power output a lot more and ride much more smoothly. This, and the heat (now up to about 35/36°C), might explain why I was a bit cooked coming into T2. I definitly took my time a bit more than usual (a few seconds anyway) and made an error in taking off without the small soft flask of water that I’d left ready. Fortunately there were two aid stations on the 4.5km loop where I drank water and threw some over my head. I don’t usually like to do this, as I hate getting salt washed into my eyes, but I was so hot that I think it evaporated pretty much instantly and I didnt get any on my face!
The first 2km were a real slog, and the short trail climb to the 2nd aid station nearly broke me. An older guy who left T2 at the same time as me asked if I wanted to pass on the climb and I politely declined… then cooled off with water and started to feel better. The second half was mostly downhill or flat and I finished feeling pretty good. Even managed to finish with a smile :
Official results show me as 47/81 - nearly in the top 50%! Gained a few places on the bike, lost a few places in T2 and on the run, but overall really happy with how it went.
Also gave me the chance to use Strava’s new offroad categories to generate 3D pics
Leading up to this I’ve been on the LV Offroad Tri plan. Frequency of workouts has been good, but I’m not sure I’ve been hitting the kind of bike efforts that really match our local MTB terrain.
Time off and holidays now - there aren’t really any more races that inspire me until next summer, so I’ll do some gravel, mix it up with some outdoor TrainNow workouts, run and swim a bit and in a few weeks put a training plan back into place. I feel like I should at least maintain my swim frequency, and sometime before next spring fit in a couple of dedicated swim and run blocks.
Oh, nearly forgot - the big advantage of doing short course races in fiushing villages is being able to make the most of the lunch opportunities (Alas no oyster photo, but they were excellent too!)
(Particularly given that the day before and after were gorgeous.)
