London Duathlon over and out

Seems like ages ago now that I booked a slot in the London Duathlon. I said at the time I booked that I was doing so because I wanted something to focus on after the Etape. To that end it served its purpose.

It was quite nice to switch from cycling dominated training to running. In fact after the Etape I did no formal cycle training apart from my commute and some leisurely Sunday rides. Until that point too the furthest I had ever run in my life was about 11km a couple of years ago. So in the lead up to the Duathlon I built my running distance up as follows (all in Km):

6.5, 10, 10, 12.5, 16, 9, 21.1 (first half mara!), 5, 12, 20

On the big day I was in the group to set off just after the elites. The first Ultra distance Duathlon and I was in it. It felt quite good. The first 20km run went ok - I even managed to overtake a few and came in at 1:52 which was quicker than I thought I would do. The bike leg was a disaster though. I came out of transition and went to clip in with my right foot and a part of my cleat broke preventing from properly clipping in for the whole bike leg. Worse though was that I almost immediately got a hot-foot attack just like on the Etape. I had changed my cleat position, put insoles in my shoes but again it was the blow-lamp on the feet again. This meant I just could not get any speed up and I did the 80km and 7 laps in an appallingly slow [just under] 3 hours.

The minute I got to the dismount line before transition I took off my shoes and ran in my socks to rack my bike. Trainers on and I was off on the final 10km run. I didn't really run, I shuffled but looking at my Garmin it seemed I had plenty of time to break my 6 hour target time. After about 10 mins my Garmin battery went flat (I thought it was good for 8 hours in training mode grrr) so I had no idea if I was going to make it at the pace I was shuffling at. I saw someone ahead who was wearing the same colour number as me and they seemed to be walking then running but even though I was kind of running I just couldn't catch them.

Within the last 2 km I blew up completely. I grabbed 2 cups of water from the drinks station and walked a bit while I drank them. I started to 'run' again but 200m from the finish line and at about the only point on the whole course where there was a concentration of spectators I got cramp down the back of my right leg. I lent on the side trying to stretch it and people were shouting for me to carry on so I limped on and then someone shouted, "come on mate, make it look good for the cameras". With that I just managed to hit a few running like movements to cross the line. In fact I wasn't sure I had finished until I heard a voice behind me say, "would you like a medal?" and it seemed I had run though the finish in my befuddled state.

I missed my 6 hour target by a few minutes. Gutted and annoyed that the bike leg did for me. Oh well....

That's it for this blog. I now formally declare this blog over. I might pop up again later and if you keep your own blogs going then I will drop in as it would be lovely to keep in touch.

All the best,

Andrew