Unfortunately due to the fact that our entire winter's rain fell in the early part of June, Windsor were forced to call off the swim part of the Windsor Tri for safety reasons. Although the swim is by far my least favourite discipline I was disappointed as I wanted to experience a full distance triathlon with an open water swim.
However, it was a fully justified decision on the part of Windsor who utilised their back up plan and ran a duathlon instead. It was also my first one of those so at least I got to do something new :-)
So to the race itself. The first run (in place of the swim) was 1km. Not in itself particularly taxing and not much to say about it really. Transition went smoothly and then onto the bike which was hard. Spent the first 20-ish miles flying along then felt like death for the remaining 6. Lot of pain generally on the bike which does need sorting out in terms of position (and probably training!). Was actually very pleased with the amount of people over-taken and with my eventual time, which probably rather flattered my actual abilities on the bike but adrenaline is a wonderful thing!!!! Slightly hairy moment when I got a little carried away and hit a rather large pothole but the fiB and I remained together and intact for the remainder of the bike phase.
The run was very difficult. The course is very different to anything I have seen in my previous running background. 3 loops making up the 10km is quite difficult mentally and running up (and down) the same hill 3 times is just mean!!
So to the hard numbers:
Run 1 (1km): 0:4:35
Bike (42km): 1:16:44
Run 2 (10km): 0:45:34
Total (inc. transition): 2:09:38
Overall position: 434
Category position: 6
Was rather pleased with the whole thing. I know I couldn't have given more on the bike and the run2 was a pretty decent 10k for me even on fresh legs.
So the plan is still to complete an Olympic Distance triathlon this year. It'll probably be one of the Human Race events at Eton Dorney in September. Training will focus on longer bike rides with running off the bike. Although I did quite a lot of running after bike training this time, the thing I struggled most with was the sheer distance I really needed to be riding on the bike and hence simply just fitting in the amount of training required.
