Duathlon Training

Monday, April 03, 2006

And Finally ...

Well the big day has finally come (and gone!) and all the training and worrying about punctures is over. After an incredibly hot and sunny day on Saturday and the worry of a niggly muscle strain picked up playing hockey (luckily despite the heat is was hardly a strenuous game as we romped home with a 9-1 win !!) Sunday dawned - wet, wet, wet! It was miserably misty fine rain when I left home at 7:30 am but had settled into a nice heavy steady rain by the time the start came at 9am ! I was in the 4th group to start and seemed to be surrounded by fast runners as we set off at quite a pace, I managed to stay with the front runners for a few Km and then dropped off a bit as I slowed to something a bit more comfortable. It was not the nicest of routes - round the agricultural centre (otherwise known as the abbatoir!) which meant running on muddy tracks and avoiding cow muck rather than on roads. When we got to the turn around point I was amazed to be told that we were half way as I thought there was at least another half a km to go, but then amazingly there was the 1km left sign up ahead - I think the distance must have included some of the transition as well as my time was well up on anything I've ever run in training and I don't think we were That fast! Anyway I found my bike without any problems, a short run over the grass to the mounting point and then off onto the road for the 10km bike ride. Despite having checked and double checked the position of the magnet for my cycle computer as soon as I started I realised I had no speedometer coming up so couldn't monitor my speed, luckily the rev. counter was still working so I just had to rely on that. It was good to have other cyclists around as it gave me the momentum to really push it and make sure I got past plenty of people :-) The beginning and end of the leg were the slowest as there were a couple of hundred metres at each end where you were drafted single file through cones etc so at the mercy of the person in front, but apart from that it was a good hard cycle, and again it was a fast time. Once I dismounted I had to push myself to keep running with my bike back through transition - very tempting to walk but kept going. The mighty P was there cheering me on so that helped. The final run was hard hard work. Not only was the first part uphill but it was on wet (and by now muddy) grass making it even harder. I'm sure it would have been quicker if I'd walked the first bit but I was determined to keep running, however slowly! There was no danger of doing a fast time on this leg that was for sure, but I managed to keep going and was very releived when the finish line finally appeared and I could do my last minute 'sprint' (ha ha I use the word very loosely) over the line.
What a relief to be finished - soaking wet, mud (and who know what else) splattered up the backs of my legs, but finally finished - and not a puncture in sight!!
My final, official time was 55mins and 27 seconds. As my aim had been to go under 55 minutes excluding transitions this meant that I had smoked it (as my transitions were over 2 minutes in total) - making me very happy! Having checked the website for official timings etc later, I finished 116th (out of a field of around 900) which is not bad at all for a first timer I reckon!
I was very glad to get home and have a shower and into some dry clothes that's for sure. It would have been even better if I had just been able to laze around on the sofa for the rest of the day reading the paper, but I had to play another game of hockey in the afternoon. (I know I know, how insane is that!) So after a bit of a rest, a nice cup of tea, and boiled egg on toast for my lunch it was back out into the rain for a game of hockey.
It wasn't too bad actually as I hadn't had time to stiffen up, it wasn' t until I got home after the game and lay in the bath for 15 minutes that I was ready to collapse.
So there you are. This is now officially the end of this blog. Though not of course of my mad exercise regime :-) Nothing but hockey for a while now - then I guess it will be round the bridges time again once that finishes. So I hang up my blog for a while, maybe I'll be back once I've had a bit of a break from it. So until then, this is evadne signing off.