I have had very busy year racing
internationally so when it comes to dismantling the bike and packing it up for
the plane journey I am now an expert J
I can now have the entire bike
dismantled and bagged up in two hours flat. You could not believe how much
planning it takes to ensure that everything fits into its correct place and
that I haven’t forgotten any spare parts or essential tools.
The race in London was set completely
within Richmond Park and it was closed off from cars for the entire day.
The first run was one loop of 10km,
the cycle was four laps of 11km each and the second run was one loop of 5km.
I flew over to London Stansted
Airport on Friday evening and travelled onwards to my hotel which was over an
hour away.
Saturday I cycled the 4.5 miles from
the hotel to Richmond Park and reeked the course.
On the way over I got an opportunity to
experience cycling through the streets of Richmond. I found my interactions
with the English drivers to be very pleasant and have to say that the vast
majority were very courteous.
When I arrived I saw that there were
hundreds of people there all day checking out the course like myself. The transition
area and event village was being built and there seemed to be a great buzz in
the air.
Once I was happy that I understood
the course and had picked out any dangerous corners on the bike course, I collected
my race number and timing chip and cycled home to the hotel.
Back home afterwards I went through
the usual pre-race checks of all my kit and made sure everything was set to go.
I managed to find a nice local
Italian restaurant in the evening to get my usual pre-race spaghetti bolognaise
which went down a treat
As there were thousands taking part
in the different distances, we were scheduled to start in waves of between
25-30 athletes every 60 seconds.
I had picked the earliest start time
which was 10:30am so made sure to get down to the transition for 8:30am.
I racked my bike, got everything set
up and began my warm up. Before I knew it, 10:15am had arrived so I began queuing
up to the start line to ensure that I would be starting in the first wave.
We were given the count down, I quickly
crossed myself and we were off. I didn’t go out too hard this time as the first
3.5km of the run were a very long and gradual climb with the final 500metres
being very steep.
After 500metres I began to take my
bearings to see who had come with me from the start. I glanced quickly to my
right and saw that a French guy called Damien Derobert was close on my heels. “Damn”
I thought, I wasn’t going to have it all my way today.
As we approached the 2km mark and the
start of the steep hill, I decided that I would make an attack just after we
went into the hill.
As I made my move, I tried to pull
away making sure to zig zag away from Derobert as I began to almost sprint. After
a couple of minutes I was going flat out and fast running out of steam. Looking
back quickly, I saw that he was still right behind me. My plan hadn’t worked so
I had to quickly re-evaluate my race strategy. I knew that I needed to conserve
my energy for the rest of the race as we crested the hill so I began to ease up
which is went Derobert then made his move and tried to pull away as I recovered.
I responded and we ran together until
the 6km mark before he once away put in another burst and opened a small gap. This
gap remained constant up until the 8km mark before he put another burst in,
opening the gap to around 15 seconds as I came into transition.
I had a very good transition and as I
mounted my bike I could see Derobert looking back at me.
We traded places between first and
second place for the first lap of 11km which included a killer of a climb that
had me out of the saddle as I struggled to quickly change the gears on my
tri-bars.
After the first lap, I decided that
it was time to make my move and try to put road between myself and Derobert.
As I sped past transition, I had a
3km, almost pan flat section where I was able to time trial hitting speeds of
60km/hour. I managed to pull out a minute and a half over second place as I finished
the 44km.
There were several severe right angle
bends on the bike course meaning that I had to be very alert and ready to break
as I went into them.
As I approached the dismount line
after 44km, I removed my feet from my tri-shoes as I got ready to dismount from
the bike. However, I encountered the same problem again in that my calves were
almost locking solid causing unbelievable pain.
I had to straighten up quickly in
order to avoid them locking totally as I ran with the bike into transition.
I had practiced finding the correct
rack for my bike in transition when I arrived that morning so this time transition
was a very smooth event unlike the Euro’s in Austria.
The final run of 5km was fairly
uneventful as I ran out in the same direction as the first 10km, turning left
after 1km and ran the final 4km to arrive back at transition.
London was a great experience for me
and it was a fantastic feeling when it was officially confirmed later that day
that I had won the Standard Distance London Duathlon.
I would like to say a massive thanks to everyone who very kindly donated to my Pledge Sports website. It helped hugely to get me to the Europeans and London.
