National (drafting.....) Duathlon championships

And so to Milton Keynes. Well, the somewhat more splendid Emberton country park actually. I was hoping to improve upon my somewhat poor showing in this race from last year and after nearly cracking the top 20 at Clumber park I was confident of a good performance. Well I was almost 3 minutes quicker than last year and managed improvements in all three disciplines, particuarly the bike. Unfortunately this didn't really translate into a notable improvement on my position from last year and I failed again to crack the top 50. Why? How on earth could I have been almost 3 whole minutes quicker than last year yet fail to improve on my position? In a word, DRAFTING. There was a ridiculous amount of it going on. At about the 6 mile stage on my bike, a group of about 20 came flying past. What do you do? Grin and bear it or....cheat? I can't see the point of cheating. Frustrating? Yes. But I know I put in a good performance on the day and I know it was MY performance.

Early morning mist

B of the bang!

Clumber Classic - Clumber Park

The first national ranking race of the year and it's back to the exhausting 10k/40k/5k format. As well as being part of the national ranking series this race was also a qualifier for the World championships later this year in North Carolina. I'll be focusing solely on the Europeans instead this year so this race was just about improving upon last year and getting some good points in the bag for my national ranking.

Anyway, I managed 22nd and 5th in age group. A notable improvement on last years 48th though I should have been stronger on the bike but the first Olympic of the year is.....probably the hardest. I came into T1 in 6th after a strong first run, muffed up getting my bike out of transition and took the first lap in around 33 minutes. Unfortunately I suffered somewhat on the 2nd lap and had real problems coming back into T2 with cramp. The last run was slower than I would have hoped but I was reasonably happy with 22nd.

Next up - the national championships in 4 weeks time

Aim: a much quicker bike.

T1 and Finish line.....at last