Dambuster Duathlon

Today is the day, the Dambuster Duathlon which takes place amid challenging, windy conditions. I am almost fit for it. I feel that if I’d had another week the Achilles might be fully recovered but as it isn’t it’s all about surviving the initial 10k run. So its head down and go into the wind coming off the reservoir.

This is a qualifier for the ITU World Championships and I think this has cut the numbers a touch. Clearly some are not up for it. So this year we have three waves rather than four and they’ve also closed the start times up. Meaning I now start with the oldies and the women start just five minutes behind me rather than twenty minutes last year. I’m going to get overtaken a lot. The first woman passed me on the bike last year, they’ll pass me on the run this time.

I can't even keep pace with the person in the 'fat lad at the back' t-shirt. I hasten to add that although he is indeed a lad, he is neither at the back nor fat. I'm also very surprised you can get those t-shirts in Extra Small.

I safely negotiate the run without further injury and my 48:20 is only slightly slower than last year when I was also protecting an injury. I follow 'fat lad' in to transition but then don't see him for dust on the bike. The bike nicely takes the weight off the Achilles but it’s far from easy given that the first nine miles are always hilly but today are straight into the wind.

At times I thought I was going to start rolling backwards such was the painfully slow progress on those first nine miles in to a strong headwind. It was windy last year but not like this.

Once those initial nine are out of the way the remaining sixteen are much easier and sometimes even wind assisted. 01:34:49 is slightly slower than last year but that was the winds fault.

The final run is a battle, a painful battle, which I know means I won’t be walking normally for a while but 26:30 means I get the job done in 2:52:37. I think I enjoyed that.

A corking 280th place. I have earned the t-shirt, the pint of alcohol free lager and the massive flapjack thing that you could feed a family of five for a week on.