Duathlon done. Didn’t come last (quite…)

Duathlon… that had once been a triathlon…. done!

So the main thing is that I turned up (60 out of the 170 entrants didn’t). And the most important thing is that I completed it.

The details probably don’t matter too much….

I came 90th overall, but I was the 25th female! So… quite a male-dominated race. Maybe all the women were swimmers…

I was disappointed with my bike time (42.03 for the 20K, whereas I did the same loop in 40.26 three years ago), but I felt very relaxed on the bike. I didn’t take it easy, but I didn’t push it either. So it’s reassuring to know that I can knock off a loop like that without much (any!) preparation….

My transitions were beyond appalling: both nearly a minute and a half long! Seriously! What was I doing? (Well… I know what I was doing in the second one. My carpal tunnel syndrome was so bad getting off the bike that I couldn’t feel, let alone use, my hands).

But my first run was respectable (9.02 for 1.8K) and, although my second run was also slower than the last timeI did it (18.59 for 3.2K compared to 17.49), it felt okay. And I did better (relative to everyone else) in the second run than I did in the first which, I guess, shows that the bike didn’t kill me as much as it did other people.

(If you add the 2 runs/ times together, that makes 28 minutes for 5K… which is an okay pace for me).

I didn’t feel too awful when I started running after being on the bike. I just felt like I’d cycled to running club, like I always do, and was going for a run.

So it’s done. And I’m glad I did it.

One of the nicest aspects of it all was that my lovely friend got up at Godforsaken o’clock to come over and support me, so that I didn’t have to go on my own. It turned a scary depressing event into a day out. Very grateful! 🙂

So there may be photos to follow..