Well this morning’s Jekyll and Hyde Duathlon went well. It was a chilly start with a few spots of drizzle.  142 people started and 137 finished.

The first run leg set off with a blistering pace and I was quickly relegated to the rear half of the field, finishing ranked 98th. Run1 consisted of two laps around the Serpentine for a total distance of 8km. My HR was around 90-94% max the whole way.

The bike kicked off well – it was 6 (that’s 1 2 3 4 5 6!!!) laps totalling 19.5km. I managed to keep up a good pace along the way, and overtaking more people than were overtaking me, while counting the laps. I got to lap 6 or was it only lap 5? So I wasn’t sure if I skipped lap 5. So not wanting to be disqualified I threw in another lap. Based on the splits and the fact I dropped to 120th rank in the bike section I’m convinced I did 7 laps 🙁 What an idiot!! (If I remove roughly 1/7th of the bike leg – about 6 mins I’d have ranked about 80th in the bike and then I’d have jumped to around 87th or so over all). The only really scary moment of the bike was on lap 1 went I went into the turn into North Carriage Drive slightly fast and nearly lost it… The front tyre started skidding out from under me, but somehow managed to pull it back under control- that corner got much respect after that! Again HR was up at around 90% of max.

Anyway the second run leg was painful with a couple of twinges of cramp in the calves which I managed to trundle through and was ranked 95th on the run2 time .  HR was again hovering around 90% of max, but I did see it dip down to 88%.

Overall I posted a time of 1h41:27 with an overall rank of 109.  My max HR was high, very high, and I’m surprised I could sustain it for as long as I did… Anyway, my legs are achy now and I’m feeling a lot more knackered than last weekend!

• Run 1 (8km) : 36:01 (Ranked 98th) (4:30/km)
• T1 + Bike + T2 (19.5km) : 47:24 (Ranked 120th)  (24.6km/h)
• Run 2 (4.2km) : 18:02 (Ranked 95th) (4:18/km)
• Total: 1h41:27 (Ranked 109th)

Lessons learnt:

• learn to count and concentrate on the lap counting
• take corners with less pace in the wet
• practice tri-shoes and transitions
• sort out the HRM/foot pod/bike speedo. GPS? *
• Incorporate some anaerobic (HR at around 90% max) training for these shorter distance events

 * The foot pod pace was totally off. The bike speedo didn’t work or didn’t link with the bike. I bumped the stop watch so don’t have any HR data past the first lap