Finally did a triathlon!

[Torchwatch]

Was there no bike ride section, with normal swim briefs you would have felt the saddle after a while.

Well done for completing the event, whatever it was, and showing it could be done in swim briefs.

When I finished my first triathlon my brother forgot where he had parked the car, I remember walking around Canterbury city walls in a sweaty tri-suit with a space blanket over my shoulders looking for his yellow beach buggy.

[epicinspeedo]

I have two triathlon briefs. They have a bit of padding, but I'd imagine the real concern would be chafing on the inside of the upper thigh where legs may rub on the bike seat. I have not yet ventured out on a bike ride in a brief to see how it would go.

Nothing like wandering around exhausted in a sweaty tri suit looking for a car!

[Torchwatch]

Try a little lubricant on the saddle before the race, Vaseline (petroleum jelly) might do it. Applying it to your body won't work as it will wash off during the swim section.

[Byron]

Well done - but this is one event today you might not have enjoyed quite so much.
Here are competitors moving en masse in the swim section of the annual Virgin Active London Triathlon - not a single speedo to be seen and it's wetsuits all round (there may be a current heatwave but it is after all still the hypothermic (and maybe toxic) River Thames):
http://s4.runnersworld.co.uk/uploads...edium/5861.jpg

[Torchwatch]

There are salmon in the Thames these days, makes a change from the era when a stomach pump was compulsory for anyone that fell in.

There used to be a couple of "beaches" beside the Thames in London, boys used to sun themselves and bathe in the waters at these places. See the Battle of Britain movie to see these boys standing knee deep in the waters and arguing over aircraft identification as dog fights and bombing took place overhead.

Just found a site about the Tower Beach which was opened in 1934:
http://www.hrp.org.uk/TowerofLondon/...cus/TowerBeach

[Byron]

That's an interesting bit of history - wish it was still true about the salmon but where's the PLA's water aeration boat these days? (or has it given up when
the infrastructure for waste water treatment is so ancient and inadequate now that there is to be another Thames under the Thames in a tunnel to be bored at a cost of billions of pounds?).
We did get a whale of course but the poor animal beached way too far upstream and unfortunately died during all the efforts to get him back to the estuary (the remains (might be her not him)are now in the Natural History Museum in Kensington).

The beach was great for the poor east end kids of the day and the idea was revived only last year - just a waste of money however as the rip tides and strong currents make it necessary to constantly top-up the sand.
I think eyes were cast at the Seine in Paris - but that's a different matter where the artificial beach has been created up on the banks.

The inebriated guy who swam across near Blackfriars last year was fined
but as an aside is there any film of the Major who was also fined many years ago when he flew his aircraft under the arches of fourteen bridges?

[Byron]

Took ages to retrace this but couldn't resist repeating clever pic on some alternative recreation there (old beach location far left in photo)
http://www.reflexstock.com/stock-pho...30964735-0.jpg