I decided to delve into my roots and take part in a triathlon. Being a mountain biker and ex-triathlete, an off-road triathlon sounds like the perfect thing to do for some fun this time of year.
With minimal swimming or running training finding a time and place in my cycling training schedule my objective apart from having a fun race was to simply go out and ride the bike leg as hard as I possibly could to get some speed work in before the last race of the season in two weeks time. Therefore the objective for the swim and the run was simply... hang in there and survive!
Survive I did in the swim and exited the water about just over a minute behind the leader. My lack of triathlon participate over the last two years came to show in the often forgotten 4th discipline of triathlon... the transition. I made the amateur of all amateur errors and lost my bike in the transition that resulted in me running around the rather large transition area like a lost fart in a thunder storm (in my defense the officials had, however, allowed the participants of the shorter route who were starting later into the transition area to rack their bikes, which meant that there were lots of people all around the transitions area). Otherwise all was fine after finding my bike and I headed off in pursuit of the 4 guys ahead of me. I managed to catch up to the leader after 6km and continued to keep pushing the pace. From what I could tell I had built up a sizable lead going into the run.
I felt good on the run and was most please with how I was going until I got to 7km. The run ended up being just under 13km and I started to take some major strain after 7km. I started to get very stiff and my muscles were hurting. However, "hang in there and survive" to the finish I managed and topped it off with first place by just over 10min!
As I write this two days after the race I feel as if my entire body should be wrapped in plaster-paris in order to limit my movements as everything hurts so bad! In conclusion to run 13km at full pace without any training is not a good idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment