Having taken the plunge to focus on Duathlon for the first half of 2016 (if you saw me swim you would fully understand this decision) with a view to AG qualification, I had been following a training programme from Coach Yeoman (should have checked what I was letting myself in for first!). What with a few blocks of training under my belt I felt I needed to have a bit of a trial run over the race distance I was training for as I had never done the distances back to back and didn’t want the 1st qualifier in March to be my first outing overthe distances.
So I signed up for the F3 Events Standard Distance which was held at sunny/windy/rainy/boring/grey/exciting (delete as applicable) Dorney Lake on 24th Jan, Coach advised a slightly reduced training week, and to race accordingly as it is not an A or even B race (wise words). So I duly did pretty much a full week of training and allowed myself Saturday as well as my usual Friday as a rest day.
All checked in and bike racked I warmed up and lined up for the race briefing, with there being the Super Sprint/Sprint + Standard all starting at the
same time it was going to be interesting on the first run. As soon as the gun went you sort of could tell who was doing which distance, although the
lead guy was actually doing Standard!! It was a 2.5km lap (so 4laps for me) although as it transpired at the end a few of us compared GPS and most
of us had the distance as more like 10.25/10.3km for the 4 laps (so extra for free!).
I settled into a good pace and ran with a couple of guys who were my pace, pretty uneventful run, a little windy and legs less than 100% fresh but back into T1 and argghh, my visor on my helmet is missing, thankfully the marshall noticing me searching like a fool around my bike asked if I was looking for a visor, YES, he had picked it up and had it in his bag, so he quickly passed it to me and I was on my way, probably only added 15secs but was a little stressful.
Bike was 8 x 5km (slightly short) laps, which had us going towards the boathouse from the entrance end on the right hand road, through the chicane and then a sharp left over the bridge and back down the middle path between the lakes. The wind was sort of not fully with or against either way, which was a little odd, and the sharp left at the bridge nearly had a few of us as it was a little slippy with wet leaves. Once back at the entrance end it was another fairly sharp left and back around, I was really pleased with my laps as maintained a really consistent pace, only passed by one bike and overtook quite a few. Hopefully once I get my Tri bike built I will be a little faster than I am riding my road bike.
Back into T2, and with slightly funky feeling legs, I was not super quick in transition, but something I can/will practice, it was out onto the 2nd run, and yes, legs felt slightly not my own, which I was sort of expecting. With pretty much only the Standard people out on the run course I could sort of gauge where I was once on the out and back laps, so gave myself a target of catching the person ahead and then the next if possible until the end. Trying to maintain the pace I wanted was HARD as much mentally as physically, really having to keep focused, and boy did 5km feel like a long way. With only 400m or so left managed to get to the two guys ahead of me and go past them and hoped they didn’t come back at me as legs were a bit ouchy, thankfully I was ahead still by the time the Finish line was my saviour.
Once I had sucked enough air in to make my way over to the Results Desk I punched in my race no and got my results on screen/print out and I was pleasantly surprised with 12th Overall and 3rd AG (V40) with a Total Time of 2:10:32. So plenty of positives, I think I can go faster fully rested, I can improve my T1+T2 and I will have a few more weeks training under my belt come the Qualifiers in March + April.
Looking forward to racing many more times in my Viceroys colours during 2016 #Proud_To_Wear_Pink
As raced and reported by David Heggarty
