Antwerp 70.3 Race

05Aug09

Email to my coach Pete, bit of a technical write-up, proper race report coming soon.

Well on the whole think Sunday went pretty well (though not sure I thought so at the time).

Times were

Swim 0:47:09
T1 0:04:36
Bike 3:00:21
T2 0:02:44
Run 2:41:00
Total 6:33:06

Swim

Bit of a weird start (broken into waves 3 minutes apart), but started pretty well (no worries about temperature, water temperature might have actually been warmer than air temperature).

Had problems with my sighting, but think I worked out why, the course was anti-clockwise, and as I breathe on the right hand side there was not much on that side (all the buoys on the inside). This was made worse by getting off track quite seriously twice in succession, the second time I was pointing in the wrong direction (2nd turn point rather than the first) couldn’t work out why either, however I think they may have been an inflow into the lake and a strong current pushing me to the left – suspect not much that can be done for that situation.

Time seems slow, but looking back at Monaco that’s a 7m improvement over a year – huge difference in how I felt coming out of the water as well. I think a lot ot take from this, and hopefully will see continued progress (sub 40m would be a stretching but possible goal for next year I think)

T1 bit slow as kit in bags to try and keep dry.

Bike

Pretty much went to plan, at 30km looked like I was on for 3:09, by 60km 3:04 and quite surprised to be at 3:00:21 by 90km (if only I’d got to the mat a few seconds earlier!). Was very windy in parts, but managed it well. Got stuck in a couple of races with people, but tried to refrain and go by the numbers, I knew I was generally around 30kmh on average, and didn’t see much point in pushing harder as would probabaly be too much.

I think one key factor on the bike was I changed back to my 11-26 cassette (from a 11-23 I had been using most of the season), this seemed to give me a much better ability to accelerate into the wind, or out of turns etc. So even in the windier sections, never felt as bad as Dorney the other week.

T2 went OK, bit of fun finding stuff as first time I’d seen that transition area!

Run

This started really well, first lap (about 7km) took about 45m, it wasn’t as fast as I should be able to run, but seemed like it would set me up for a decent time of 02:15 if I could keep it up (think walked a couple of times). However I just couldn’t keep that pace up, and by end of second lap and most of third was in complete survival mode with very rubbery legs. Was a bit disappointed, but on reflection I realised that it took a few races before I put in a decent run at Olympic distance, so hardly surprising if 70.3 is similar.

Overall, very please, Swim and Bike better than Monaco and MK this year. Run not so good, but given that has been my weakest area of training this year, not overly concerned.

Ankle help up well (which is good, as it felt a bit battered on the Saturday after a longer than necessary walk from registration).

Be good to focus on the run in the next few weeks before the vit (maybe some long runs or something – maybe a half marathon or something?)

Also a few things I forgot to mention in here which I’ll be discussing with Pete. Nutrition was good, run was down to legs giving up, rather than bonking like I did at the Cowman.

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