National Duathlon Champs Silver.
March 28th, 2010 by Will
Raced National Duathlon Champs as my first race of the season today.
Must say, it was bloody good to get racing and get away from the training phase if only for a short weekend.
It was a very windy and very exposed circuit, and a good field! Â There was Tim and I, I guess as the favourites. Then a whole load of other more then capable guys. Â Mark Buckingham stuck out for me, he has gone 7:55 indoor for 3k and had a load of other good results this year. As well as Dave Mitchinson, Matt Gunby, Phil Whyle, Mark Threlfall my training buddy, Tom Bishop who has been going well. Â Anyway…much bigger start list then we are used to at an early season domestic race!
I wanted to take it out hard and make a selection of athletes. Â I wasn’t sure what Tim’s form was like but I knew he would be hard to beat. Â I was very unprepared for this event, and quite unprofessional I guess. Tim had his PYRO platform pedals in so he didn’t have to change shoes where as I just wore standard bike shoes and run shoes. Also my USE Boost Tri Bars are in the post so I was pretty un-aerodynamic!
So first run was reasonably quick. Â Donny, Gunby, Buckingham and I went through 5k in under 15mins, with the first kilometer in 2:43. Â We were looking around for the whole last kilometer hence we only ran 15mins.
Tim Don attacked in transition, which is great as it gets us away from the other two guys. However while I was putting on my bike shoes, he was well away in his Pyros with a gap on me of about 10 seconds which took 6 laps of holding before i could finally reel him in! Was pretty goosed  by the time I finally got there!
We rolled round so slowly for literally for the next 2 laps and almost got caught back up again. Â Tim used all the tricks in the book to try to make me as tired as possible, which he succeeded in doing!
We got in transition and the PYRO’s got me dropped again by another 8 seconds. Â So I had to close that before before we could even start racing again! When I caught Tim I tried to put a few attacks in but it was too easy to sit behind and hide from the wind and unfortunately it was going to come down to a sprint and Tim got it with a tidy change of pace.
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I was reasonably happy with my race, I guess it’s the first one so it’s never going to be great. Â I feel I kinda controlled the race today but got out smarted quite a few too many time in a 55 mins race by Tim.
Good job to everyone who raced today. Â Especially my good friend Richard Stannard who for me had the race of the day in 4th. Â 3rd race in 16 months or something after a pretty nasty face to face with a car while on a ride!
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