Clumber Park Duathon 2007
Another training race saw me up in Clumber Park at the weekend for the standard distance Duathlon. As the first part of my “racing” training weekend, it was going to be another good chance to practice transitions, and just get a good 2 hour blow-out. Unusually for this time of the year, a beautiful, mild and clear day greeted us all as we prepared for the race start.
The gun went and we were off at a fairly decent pace, but I had already decided I was going to run my own pace today. A far hillier run than I’d expected greeted us with the 2 lap out and back basically involving going up on the way out and down on the way back. I settled into the 2nd pack by the 5k mark monitoring the gap between me and the leaders and made sure it never went above about 80 seconds. I was a bit disappointed with my time over the fist 10k to be honest as I was expected to be right up there on my recent form, but the bike testing the day before left my legs feeling pretty tight and unwilling to over-exert themselves.
Onto the bike and once again my transitions were…. Well embarrassing. I got my bike OK and ended up running with it on my shoulder over the bumpy grass transitions until I reached the mount line on the road. Once on my bike however I proceeded to pull up too hard on my shoe as I tried to put my foot in and yanked the shoe off the pedal……MUPET!!! I decided to cut my losses and stop to put it on properly and quickly taking the opportunity to get my other foot in as well. Back on the bike and I set about pulling that now near 2minute gap to the leaders back.
I knew from the bike test results yesterday that I was close to back to my best form last year so I was quite looking forward to going hard for the 40k. I had NO feedback to go by (no HR or Power) which is very unusual for me and simply went on RPE. The New Orca 226 race kit I’m wearing this season was proving a winner for comfort on the bike with none of the chest restriction I can get with some Tri-suites. By the end of lap 1 I was pretty sure I was in a about 5th and I could see what I thought were 4th and 3rd just up ahead. My legs were in an “up and down” mood and I went from feeling great for a few minutes to feeling sore and weak for the next. I was enjoying working hard though and in hindsight maybe went too hard on the bike, but with the last 10k to go on the bike I finally caught up with 1st and 2nd. They were riding…. “interestingly” for a non-drafting race and it took my most of the 10k’s to real them in after first seeing them in the distance. We all entered transition together and I once again picked up my bike and ran with it, making up an few vital seconds on them both. I then however proceeded to completely forget where I’d left my trainers and ran up and down my row looking for them in the midst of the 100’s of other white running shoes. What seamed like about a minute was probably only 20 seconds, but it was enough time for the other 2 guys to get a small gap on me…. This would prove decisive and I failed to close this any more in the last 5k run and crossed the line in 3rd.
Now although this was simply a training race and meant nothing to me as far as targets etc, I’m still annoyed when people flaunt the rules to gain an unfair advantage and if I’m honest I wasn’t too keen to shake 1st and 2nd places hands. Not very humble or mature of me and in hindsight I really was I’d been a bit bigger than that. As it turns out the guy who came first was DQ’d though not for drafting. I ended up with 2nd by a few seconds and was pleased enough.
At the end of the day, I’d raced fairly hard and really enjoyed the bike leg. Considering the testing I’d done the day before I was fairly pleased with everything. There is still clearly a lot of work to be done in the shape of bricks, if I’m to run really well come California at the end of the month though.
I stopped in at my friends Kate Foster (who also raced and did brilliantly in an even she really doesn’t like that much… far too much running she recons…. Think I might agree ha ha) parents house, who had very kindly put me up the night before. Re-fuelled with some great home made food, I was ready for the long drive home to get ready for the ½ marathon in Hastings the next day…. My legs were not going to enjoy it one bit, but I knew that it would go along way to preparing me for California.