I thought I’d do a duathlon in preparation for the triathlon season. Something nice and small just to get into the swing of multisport races; a sprint distance race on a closed road motor circuit sounded just the ticket. However… I didn’t notice it was a World Championship qualifier until a long time after I signed up! Not so small then…
So, with my expectations set rock bottom in terms of ranking, I made sure my focus was on my personal performance! I’m still building up running after an 8 month ‘niggle’. You know, one of those things that will hopefully be gone by the next run. However, I’m really pretty confident it’s getting better now. Honest!
The course was 4 times round a 1.25 km loop for the first run, and we’d been split up into waves based on age – I was in the 40-49 wave which had 32 people in it. My plan was to run by feel, not going into the red at any point.
As soon as the race started, I drifted to near the back. I think I was in about 28th place. I was running pretty quickly for me – 3:30 per km – but nowhere near as fast as most people! However, despite dropping down to a more realistic 3:45/3:50 pace, I slowly started overtaking.
Here you see me sporting my traditional camp running wrist!
It was a cold day, and I was wearing an extra layer under my tri suit and gloves, which felt way too warm in the sun running with the wind. However, turning back into the wind I was pleased that it seemed like the correct decision. I’d got warm enough with the wind that I didn’t want to shelter behind other athletes back into the wind as I was enjoying the cooling!
By the end of the run, I was up to 21st, averaging 3:48 pace, and just sneaking under 19 minutes for 5km.
I took my running shoes off, and made my way tentatively out of transition barefoot (my bike shoes were attached to the bike). I was being careful of my niggly foot rather than being fast here. Still, it didn’t hurt and I got going.
I loved this course – there is beautifully smooth tarmac with NO POTHOLES! Sorry, got a bit excited there. It’s quite technical for a TT bike, with a few cutbacks and a hill. I overtook a lot and really enjoyed getting better at the course as I did laps.
Oh yes, the laps. I really should have read the instructions. I knew it was meant to be 20km, but not how many laps that was. I thought I’d done 2 laps and looked at how far it was – 7.5 km (yep – I’d already miscounted laps), so though it must be 6 laps. No 7. Oh bugger…
Knowing the distance might be slightly over or under so I couldn’t just rely on that, I resorted to asking people I was overtaking how many laps there were! This got a lot of confused looks, and several answers I couldn’t really hear. However – I had a cunning plan.
I knew Donald was racing, and would likely lap me towards the end of the bike. Soooo, just wait for that. Then stay close enough to spot when he dismounted, then do one more. Genius, right?
Which, surprisingly is what actually happened. It took a bit more power to stay with him once he did overtake me on lap 6 (?). At a legal distance. But it was actually fine. Maybe I should have been putting a bit more effort in all the time? Anyway, he finished, I overtook him while he was getting his feet out (un-lapped! It counts!) And did one more.
I got off the bike in 5th position, with 6th close behind.
Coming into transition I ran through carefully, barefoot again. I took my gloves off to get my ridiculous running shoes back on, but a) cramped up a bit and b) couldn’t get my fingers to work well enough to get them through the hoops on the trainers. So, this was a sloooow transition. Slow enough that Donald completed one of the 1.25km run loops before I got out (lapped again damnit!). And way behind the athlete that came into transition with me, so back into 6th.
The final run was on a different loop than the first, with a slight downhill to the turnaround point, then back up. I had no intention of burying myself here, but did want to try to run at a decent pace off the bike. The downhill helped to get going, so I averaged a respectable 3:53 per km. I got overtaken by a charging Sullivan (same story as last time I did this race), and one other athlete who was a lap behind, but he was having calf issues, and I overtook him coming into the finish.
I ended up 7th in the wave, 5th in age group, 15th overall (out of 256). And happy I hadn’t done myself any damage!
Sport Related Nonsense 
Well done Buddy
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