Monday 11 May 2009

Dorchester Fast Twitch Triathlon

Sunday was my first race of the season, the Dorchester Fast Twitch Triathlon. This was a C priority race for me that I wanted to do to start off the season as much as anything else. The race itself is a 400m pool swim, 15 mile bike and 4 mile run. Obviously this bears little or no relevance to the Ironman that is my A priority race for the year but it was nice to get in the swing of things.

My start time was 09:05 and I only live about forty-five minutes away so I didn’t have to get up too early. As I pulled into the car-park in Dorchester I had to drive past some of the guys I know from swimming in Weymouth. We had a quick chat then all went our separate ways for a while as we racked bikes and registered. Once that was done we had plenty spare time so had a chance to hang around and chat for a while. A very pleasant way to spend the morning.

Eventually it was time to go and I found myself sharing a lane with one of the guys, who went off ten seconds before me. My strategy for the swim was just to follow Chris which I managed quite well, getting a swim split of 6:51. T1 went nice and smoothly and I was just behind Chris as we headed out on the bike leg.

Chris promptly disappeared down the road leaving me in his wake.

That would have been quite depressing if it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. He is a very strong biker. He also has a much nicer bike which I keep telling my wife makes all the difference. The bike route is along a big main road and is not very picturesque, but I wasn’t really looking at the scenery. It actually felt a little strange to be pushing hard on the bike. So many of my training rides have been long, slow, endurance building rides that it didn’t feel normal to be hurrying along.

After a fairly uneventful ride it was back in to transition for T2. Again this went nice and smoothly, I remembered to take my helmet off and didn’t forget anything, which was nice. Then out on the nice flat run. Again this felt slightly strange pushing hard, with my heart rate around 180 for most of the distance. Then before I know it I was at the turn around and heading back. I managed to chase down a couple of people on the way back and I felt really strong. as I pushed hard all the way back to the finish.

So the final figures:

Swim : 6:51
Bike : 45:23
Run : 24:36
Total : 1:16:50

Chris finished in 1:09:50, winning his age group. He took over 6 minutes out of me on the bike, which I suspect is down to our different levels of talent rather than the differences in our bikes, not that I will admit that to my wife.

 

All in all, a nice race and a good day. Now I have the Weymouth Middle Distance to look forward to as my next race.

1 comment:

Doris said...

Hey! Haven't been reading blogs for a while... but nice race report. Looks like your training is going well.... as for the bike thing... I love my new carbon!! ;o)