A Little but late but better late than never.
Sunday November 20th myself and Sue (my missus) took part in the inaugural Walden off road duathlon at Carver barracks in Essex. As it was a local event an several people we knew from our club and some others were taking part we thought we would go and do it.
It is a 5k mixed terrain run followed by a 18k mixed terrain bike ride with some proper technical off road sections then the same 5k run. So was to be a nice race.
We got up at the ungodly hour of 6am to put the bikes on the car and travel to the start for registration opening at 6:30 am as we were to be entries on the day we needed to ensure we got there in time. Once we had our numbers and goody bags we racked our bikes and just wandered around waiting for the race briefing and chatting to people.
We listened to the very boring race briefing that insisted on describing every bump and turn on the route and then had a few minutes to get into position for the mass start at 8am.
Just before the start I met a firefighter from my old station and watch who is a very good triathlete and briefly said hello.
Then we were off and I started steady and as I started at the back I started to pull back some places, the route was two laps wit one loop being larger than the second. I overtook the two fast triathletes from my club and finished the run in 23:02 finishing the run in 36th place which is ok seeing as short stuff is really not my thing. The route was failrly flat but about 50% was rough track or grass so it slowed me down a bit.
I came into transition and quickly grabbed my bike and as I was using flat pedal I was in and out fairly quickly and onto the bike section which consisted of 3 laps of a 6k route with about 50% being either runway or hard track and the other half being muddy undulating technical sections through the woods which was much fun. I was using a very heavy full suspension bike which was painfully slow of the hard stuff but on the bumpy rooty stuff I was catching people and hitting traffic through the woods. My tyres were quite thick (26×2.35) with serious off road tread which was great in the tough sections but very draggy on the hard stuff so I would get past a few in the woods and get held up behind others while trying to pass but I was being destroyed on the hard stuff where there was lots of room to pass. I worked hard all three laps including the really big mound that required a lot of speed to get over or a slightly longer route around it. I just cleared it each time.
I lost a few spaces on the bike leg finishing the 3 laps in 1:17:41 and 57th place.
Then I was quickly through transition and back onto the run leg and although it was hard getting my legs to run quickly again I pushed them and started catching people again to claw back a few places which I managed. I completed the run in 25:22 and 30th fastest for the second run.
This gave me an overall time of 2:06:05 and 54th place overall.
My friend from the fire service had a DNF due to bike issues and one of our club members also had a DNF due to a puncture he could not fix.
Sue finished in 2:12:42 and 67th place overall.
A nice race well organised that will only get better next year. Need to work on my bike speed though!