Has this ever happened to you? I’m waiting for the marathon to start, and with a few minutes to go I down a gel, expecting it to start to be absorbed maybe 20 minutes later. As the start time rolls round I’m pumped, I’m psyched, I’m a machine, I’m ready to go. Then for some reason now lost to me the race is delayed about a quarter of an hour. But the time the race does start I feel sluggish and horrible - instead of flooding my muscles with a nice tender wash of glycogen, that gel has stimulated my system to soak it up with partypooper insulin. There may well have been other factors at play here, but it ended up being my slowest marathon, and there was not a moment in the run that I enjoyed myself. OK, now I must admit that I had had a very stressful year and wasn’t up to my usual level, but even so… j
Don’t ever get into bike racing if this bothers you. Seems like every other race starts late.
i had this happen at a mtb race. i was all prepped for the start, had a gel and 1/2 a redbull 10 minutes before the start (i’d been training this way all summer, have since cut out the red bull). the race was delayed by 1/2 hour. my start was TERRIBLE, as were the first 10 minutes of the race. however, i soon started feeling more human, increased the pace, passed some riders, and generally had a good time. i think your bad race might’ve been psychosomatic
agreed
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IMUK this year - absolutely terrified as this was my second tri ever (the first being 6 years ago) get to the start line for 6am start and the gun finally goes at gone 8!!
Maybe someone spiked your gel. You can’t really be trying to blame a bad race on it starting 15 minutes late, can you?
yep…Olaf told me that…apparently the year before for the half, they were waiting IN the water!
I’ve only been to a few races that started on time. 15 minutes shouldn’t bother the body. Sounds like a mental thing.
Little things can really mess you up, probably more in your head than your body. But, that can actually be a lot worse. You probably felt sluggish more because you were mentally set to go at a certain time and then had to wait, which got you out of your usual routine, irritated you and made you lose your focus.
When I swam, and the starter told us to stand up on the blocks after we had already “taken our marks”, I would always get completely off the blocks so I could have a few more seconds to clear my head and then re-focus. It would usually irritate the starter because he just wanted us to stand up and this slowed the meet down slightly, but I figured that we were having the race to see which one of us could swim the fastest, not to make his life as easy as possible.
So the consensus would seem to be (and I paraphrase a lot): delays happen a lot: negative effects are mostly in the head; physical effects will clear up after racing for a bit; the worst loss would be focus, which might be hard to regain.
I too have stood in cold cold water waiting for a race to start - not very comfortable, but much better off than those hearty souls without fullsuits. j
Yes… GFT this year 30 minute delay… What a shitty way to start a race.