Last minute decision to race the winter iteration of the Manchester Airport Duathlon last weekend. I raced this venue back in March and quite enjoyed it. The weather forecast told me there would be no ice; so off I went early Sunday in the Tri-van with road bike loaded up. I didn’t fancy the TT bike for this race. Plus if I was going to race some draft legal Duathlon in 2020 I had best dial in to the road bike position to run off my evo2max.
Both runs are short for this race, at 2.5k. The start was split into 5 waves only 15 sec apart. Being in the last wave I could see about 120 runners up ahead. The run course takes you through tunnels under the runway, which is kind of cool. But the path is narrow and overtaking slower runners is difficult. As normal there were some folk starting off way too fast and I met them go and burn out. Sure enough they drifted back and I managed to pull away to lead my wave into T1. I wasn’t sure how many runners I had past from earlier waves. So I hopped on to the bike and tried to pace the speed round the country lanes. I half expected a hoard of TT bikes to come past me but nobody caught me. Into T2 and as I approached the turn round pint of the second run I saw the first runner ahead of me. So I must have been in 2nd place overall. There looked to be some fast younger runners closing in, as I saw them after I turned for the return part of the run leg. But I was flowing well and confident I could hold them off. And so it was 2nd overall for me. I’ll take that! It was a low key race but still got to be pleased with an overall podium. The run legs felt good. Maybe the track sessions are starting to pay off. Let’s hope so!
Last minute decision to race the winter iteration of the Manchester Airport Duathlon last weekend. I raced this venue back in March and quite enjoyed it. The weather forecast told me there would be no ice; so off I went early Sunday in the Tri-van with road bike loaded up. I didn’t fancy the TT bike for this race. Plus if I was going to race some draft legal Duathlon in 2020 I had best dial in to the road bike position to run off my evo2max.
Both runs are short for this race, at 2.5k. The start was split into 5 waves only 15 sec apart. Being in the last wave I could see about 120 runners up ahead. The run course takes you through tunnels under the runway, which is kind of cool. But the path is narrow and overtaking slower runners is difficult. As normal there were some folk starting off way too fast and I met them go and burn out. Sure enough they drifted back and I managed to pull away to lead my wave into T1. I wasn’t sure how many runners I had past from earlier waves. So I hopped on to the bike and tried to pace the speed round the country lanes. I half expected a hoard of TT bikes to come past me but nobody caught me. Into T2 and as I approached the turn round pint of the second run I saw the first runner ahead of me. So I must have been in 2nd place overall. There looked to be some fast younger runners closing in, as I saw them after I turned for the return part of the run leg. But I was flowing well and confident I could hold them off. And so it was 2nd overall for me. I’ll take that! It was a low key race but still got to be pleased with an overall podium. The run legs felt good. Maybe the track sessions are starting to pay off. Let’s hope so!
No comments:
Post a Comment