European Duathlon Championships

 

The weather in Scotland sucked. It was raining, windy, cold, and humid.
The run course was good. Very hilly. For each lap 2.5km, about 700m was
spent running through a dark, smelly, underground tunnel. The bike course was
wicked. It was 6 laps around this huge mountain. At the top it was so foggy
that I could only see about 75-100m in front of me. The decent was super
fast and curvy. The climb was steep and made those less fit cyclist
suffer.The course was super slow. The hills and the weather made the
run/bike/run times look like we ran and cycled backwards. My times look very slow,
but if you compare them to others, you realize that there were fairly decent.
Anyway, that is exactly what happened in the first 10km in the race. on
the bike I made up a 1min gap to catch a group within 10min, so I'm fairly
fit on the bike. Just as fit as the best riders. Anyway, I caught up with a
group, however, they didn't want to take turns pulling to catch the
other group that was about 1.5min ahead.  I pulled the group for a bit but
decided that I wouldn't be able to catch the group ahead of me by myself...so
the pace of the group slowed dramatically - low tempo - but still some
riders were dropped on the hills that circled the mountain.  I was feeling
really good and was prepared for a fast last 5km run. However, at the beginning
of the last lap when we were riding around the traffic circle, the Canadian
in front of me crashed from slipping on the wet pavement (it was
windy,cold, and raining throughout the whole race). Since I was right behind him
drafting in the last position of the group, I crashed on top of him. 
Immediately, about 7 spectators run towards us try to pry our bikes
apart. My wheel being tangled in his seat was one of the many problems. I
watched the other riders climb the hill and disappear around the mountain while
people were untangling the bikes. Finally, my bike was free and I chased
the riders ahead of me. I slowly caught up to them by the end of the lap but
was still nowhere near them. I had a decent second run, almost catching one
racer in front of me but managed to fall about 15 seconds or so short. I
would have most definitely finished ahead of the people in my bike group
if not for the crash. I finished 35th overall. To see how my times compare click on the link.
So with the race being over, I'm feeling very confident and pumped and
know what I need to improve on for Nationals in Ontario on Sept. 15 -- that
speed for the first 3-4km of the first 10km. That way I'm already with a bike
group - drafting or catching another group ahead.

The whole trip except for the bike training went smooth. All my luggage
showed up on time, which was awesome. Five minutes into my first biking
session, I discovered I had an inch needle stuck in my tire. The next
morning my front tire was flat. Since I have tubeless tires I had to get
them fixed the next day and wait the entire day for the bike store to
glue the tires back on. The running around Scotland was great. There are tons
of parks and trails everywhere, yet the weather was constantly crappy.

Good race overall!