Indoor Triathlon World Record Attempt, 1 Nov 2020
This Sunday I raced against the clock to beat the Official Guinness World Record for the Women’s Indoor Triathlon. The record attempt took place at Nuffield Health Centre in Letchworth before the gym officially opened to the public.
This challenge involved swimming 400m in the pool (20 lengths), riding 20k on a Wattbike (12.5 miles), and running 5k on a treadmill (3.11 miles). The total time would also include the transition times between each of the 3 sections. I had to beat a time of 1 hour and 18 minutes. This was the first time the challenge was being done, so the time to beat was provided by Guinness themselves.
It was a great start to the day compared to some of the other races I have been at recently – the gym was WARM, and it wasn’t raining! And there were real toilets not just portaloos! There was also the promise of a nice warm shower immediately after the event! Luxury!
I started at 7:45am and completed the swim in 5:38; we had to do it without tumble turns which was annoying, but such are the rules! I then had to sprint across the gym to hop on the watt bike and do that leg, I managed to keep up a fairly consistent pace of 23mph and sit at a wattage around my FTP. I was mindful that I didn’t want to bonk on my run!
Hopping off the bike and straight onto the treadmill I did my 5k in a time of 20:36. This was quite disappointing as I know I can run faster than that, but having never really been on a treadmill before I struggled a bit with the forced cadence and different momentum of the treadmill vs normal road!
My total time was 58:21, smashing the women’s record, and almost beating the men’s record! As soon as you are finished you always wonder if you could have gone a little bit faster, or pushed a little bit harder, but I really enjoyed it and it was great that so many people came out to support us! We had a whole support party watching us (which is required to qualify the World Record), and there was even some cake! It was so great to do this event before the next lockdown; we had actually already rearranged it twice due to previous lockdowns, so we were lucky we managed to sneak it in!
Thank you to everyone who helped make this happen, particularly Jake who organised it, all the timekeepers, and all the official witnesses, I just turned up and ran!
Besides trying to beat the record, we were also doing this challenge to raise money for Garden House Hospice Care, Letchworth. Garden House Hospice provides palliative end of life care and supports a community of over 250,000 people. Although the Just Giving page has already reached its target of £500, Garden House Hospice Care needs to raise £5 million income every year to continue providing their free services to patients, carers and families, so any spare pennies will be much appreciated.
Emily Varley
