Its been almost two months since I last raced (Southern Lakes Half Marathon) and three months since my last multisport event and I had forgotten how much I enjoy racing. I know... you can hardly call what I do racing, but I love it nonetheless.
Today was the first of Dunedin Tri Club's Winter Duathlon Series, a series that I competed in last year. This was my first attempt at the 5km-20km-5km (run-bike-run) format after having won a 2.5-10.2.5 distance (finishing in 46:07) and come flat last in a 5-40-10 distance(2:55:59) last year.
My little brother (actually, I don't know why I call him that, he's not so little) and Michael decided that they'd talk it up during the week as they were entering the same event as a team. Chris thought that his decreasing 5km times during training would see him beat me and Michael was claiming that he felt "a sub 35min coming up for 20k". I reckon that's a bit like feeling like you are going to win Lotto Powerball this week - a wonderful dream, but about 1 chance in 3,838,380.
Anyway, I thought that their bravado deserved a bit of a wager so I responded with my own chest-beating email. "Bring it on!", I boasted and then suggested that they'd have to beat me by five minutes or more to get a beer each out of me (only fair given I had transition and I was doing it on my own). If they beat me by less than five minutes they'd owe me one beer each and if I won outright they'd owe me two beers each.
Rack'em up boys, there's no sweeter tasting drink than victory served up in four long chilled glasses! While official results are not up yet, my victory over the poor dillusional pretenders was resounding. I smashed them by at least four minutes and was the fastest on each of the three legs (even though Chris is claiming a victory by a tuft of prepubescent hair mascerading as a beard for the first leg).
Aside from the opportunity to gloat and thoughly rub it in to Chris and Michael, I was pretty pleased with my effort. I was aiming for 1:25 (1:20 if everything went extra smoothly) and I managed to pull off a 1:23:15 (official result pending). My transitions were a bit clumsy and took about twice as long as the should have, including getting cramp putting my shoes back on transitioning off the bike. I was especially pleased with my bike leg though as I averaged 34.75 km/h on a course that includes eight right angle bends which I am still trying to figure out how to negotiate while down on my aerobars. I managed to pass about a dozen people on the bike leg (sadly half of them passed me again on the last run) and I was clearly much faster than people with much more athletic physiques. I was also feeling remarkably fresh on the last leg, completing it in a time only a minute or so slower than the first leg. Almost eight months out from Challenge Wanaka, I reckon this is a pretty good sign. Although, I'm not sure that you can tell that much from a race with no swim, a ride 1/9th and a total run less than 1/4 of the Challenge Wanaka distances.
Next race: Christchurch Half Marathon 7 June.
2 comments:
Now the official results are out, I think we need to correct some of the facts in Rich's post. His watch must be broken as his official time was 1:23:46 and Michael and I came in at 1:26:58. So the "at least 4 minutes" that he supposedly "smashed" us by was barely 3 minutes. Not a bad effort for us with Michael on a bike only about once a week and myself only getting into running in the past 4 months in an attempt to recover from my own injury of 5 years. I've taken 4 minutes off my 5km time in 4 months and pretty proud of that. So compared to someone who is training 12 hours a week, for us two who get out once a week, we did pretty well.
Bring on the next month when I'll try to beat you short course individual time from last year. I haven't ridden a bike in 5 years so the bike leg will be interesting.
Chris (still the "little brother")
Ok, fair enough, it was only 3 minutes. I never was that good with numbers.
Nice to see that the competitive spirit is still strong. Nothing like a bit of healthy sibling rivalry, I say.
I think its great that you are making big advances with your times. I wish I was still able to do that. As I found out last year, with inconsistent training, at some point the pace at which you improve slows significantly and you're happy to take whatever improvement you can get.
I am hoping that, with my current training regime, I'll continue to drop a few seconds here and there. In fact, and in the spirit of continued sibling rivalry, how about we make it really interesting next time and have you enter the full distance duathlon with me? With your minutes of improvement and my seconds, it should be an interesting contest. ;-)
Keep up the good work and see you at the start line.
Rich
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