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.
