Duathlon Number 2!

Well up until last year I had never taken part in a Duathlon and to be fair even last year I only did the bike leg as a member of a team, @dashing_divasuk had entered one but then put out a twitter plea for a cyclist to ride the bike section for her.

This year I thought it would be a good idea to take part in f3events duathlons and as I am preparing for ironmanUK in July the Olympic distance didn't look too long. My thoughts betray my lack of Duathlon experience!

So race 1 for me was the 2nd in the Winter Duathlon Series and I managed to get round in a time of 2:41:31 which was better than I was expecting.

Then yesterday was my 2nd duathlon and the final one in the Winter Series, I was still wondering why I had opted for the Olympic distance but was determined to give it another go.  As in my first event Dame Kelly Holmes was taking part, not that I saw much of her in the race except for the cross overs on the run, oh and the fact that she had finished and was collecting her bike from transition as I came off my bike and on to my second run.

There was again a smattering of GBR vests on display, including 1 who was obviously doing the super sprint distance as he was starting his second run as I was finishing my first.

So after what felt like a reasonable first run of 5k I was out on my bike for the 40k ride which again seemed to go well I was catching a fair few people on the way round the 5k lap, having said that I was caught by a few as well.

On returning to transition and trying to ignore all the people that had already finished their events I started out on my 10k run, my legs just did not want to work and it was hard work on the 4 lap course especially when most of the people that I had caught on the bike came past me again.

Eventually I had started my last lap and felt the end was in sight, then coming towards me was @lazygirlrunning who was out supporting rather than competing, as she is my cousin I may even forgive her for taking a photo!

Anyway I managed to finish the event in 2:36:49 so about 5 mins quicker than my first outing, when I looked at the results online it said that I was the slowest over the last 10k run. These have since been added to and I am no longer listed as the slowest but not far off.

In fact looking at the splits my runs were almost identical across both events and all the time I improved was on the bike! Looks like my running needs most work prior to my trip to Bolton!

An extra feature of the online results was that I seemed to have become younger in the second event dropping down from the 45- 49 age group to the 40 - 44 age group, if I can keep up that ageing process I may well enter more duathlons!