St Patrick’s day greeted some hardy souls with some Irish style weather of rain and cold at Castle Fields in Southsea. With the St Patricks day Portsmouth Duathlon serving up 3 distances, sprint, standard and long, I’d opted for the standard distance of 5k run, 26k bike and 5k run.

As most Triathletes know, one of the golden rules of racing is to not to try new things on race day you haven’t tried in training. So, today I thought I would test that to the limit with:

• New TT bike only ridden twice outside for total of 45mins and never with a rear disc (which Id decided to race on this time)

• New Tri-suit I’ve never run in

• New calf sleeves I’ve never run or biked in

• New TT helmet I’ve never worn on the bike

What could go wrong? (Spoiler, not much really but a couple of annoying niggles). Setting up transition in the rain was a fun experience, as was trying to figure out how to attach my shoes to my new TT bike which has no front mech and no rear skewer handle sticking out (I gave up and decided to put shoes on in T1 and avoid the flying mount on a new bike in the rain, probably sensible).

So, after a brief warm up and a brief briefing we set off into the rain for the first 5k run. Having not run at race pace for a number of months after a bit of a more polarised training block, I was totally unsure what I’d feel like. Heading out was pleasantly surprising with my target pace of 4min/k feeling relatively good. It was only heading back the other way along the seafront that I realised how strong the wind was, hence feeling so good with a tailwind on the way out 😊. I headed out in about 5th place I think, a couple of younger lads headed off into the distance along with a couple of more experienced hands who had the look of proper runners about them. All I could do was hope to see them at some point on the bike and stick with my pace. Spoiler alert, I saw the 2 lads a bit later but didn’t see the front 2 again, they were long gone…

Heading back along the seafront and towards T1 a guy that had been following me the whole of the run put in a bit of a surge and overtook. I pushed a bit to stay with him and this turned out to be a blessing as he stacked it on a slippery grass corner heading into T1 and this gave me just enough warning to not do the same thing. Fortunately he was ok and we ran in to T1 side by side, with another marshal shouting “be careful, its slippery” which gave us both a chuckle.

A quick T1 and out onto the bike course for 2 laps of the circuit along the seafront. Initially the bike felt nice and fast and I settled into what felt like a decent but comfortable pace. Unfortunately it only took half a lap or so before my lack of time on the TT bike started to rear its ugly head, with my forearms tiring quickly and feeling crampy and then my back starting to stiffen up on lap 2. This meant lots of wriggling round on the bike and dropping onto the base bars regularly which wasn’t ideal but prob didn’t cost me too much. By the second lap the sprint athletes were on the course and it started to get really busy. Got stuck behind a couple of cars as they stuck behind other athletes which was a bit frustrating but all part of racing on open roads. For the first time ever on this course I didn’t get stopped by any traffic lights though which was a bonus! By the end of the bike my back was cramping up nicely and I was pretty happy that I hadn’t opted for the longer distance. Ive had this many times in the past so I was confident it wouldn’t impact my run, I just needed to keep pushing to the end of the bike and then stretch it out in T2. I managed to pick off a few other sprint athletes on the 2nd half of the bike and prob came off the bike in about 3rd place. The depressing thing about duathlons is that you know that the guys that out ran you in the first run would prob outrun you in the 2nd run too so, having caught them quite late on the bike I was pretty sure I would get passed by 2 or 3 of them at least.

A quick(ish) T2 and into my lovely carbon plated race shoes and short run across the grass showing quite how little grip they have offroad. As I had barely run in these shoes since last year then plan was to run my training shoes in the first run and these in the 2nd, hopefully keeping the times relatively similar. A nice surprise was my legs didn’t feel terrible considering I’d yet to do any brick workouts this year, this was the first run off the bike since October last year! Again holding 4min/k felt ok heading down the seafront but I was quickly passed by the 2 young lads and another chap. A slightly confusing moment when her overtook me and asked if his arse looked ok. I was about to give him a 7/10 but he then explained that he’d sat down in T2 and was worried he’d got mud on his behind and looked like he’d shat himself. Anyways, a fairly uneventful run out to the turn point, with brown arse man getting a good gap on me and, by the turn, there was no one close behind either so that took a bit of the impetus out of my run. I did see club Chairperson Rowena making the turn for the sprint distance just ahead which gave me a bit of a nudge to push on and not look too much like I was dying (she said later I looked so terrible she thought I was injured 😊). Another kilometre or so and that was it, into the final stetch and across the line in 6th place for the standard distance. Looking at the results later showed a 2nd fastest bike spit which I was happy with, throw a swim in there and I might have stood a chance of being nearer the front, bring on the “proper” race season 😊. All in all not a bad first outing for the season.

Shout outs for First Triathlon Coaching athlete Amy Pretorius for 3rd woman in the standard distance and Petersfield Tri Club Rowena Rogers for 3rd woman in the sprint, some great early season performances!
Also huge shout outs to the volunteers for supporting a dreary day with lots of enthusiasm, another really great event from Rob and the team at Believe and Achieve events.