Oulton Park Middle Distance Duathlon

Dress rehearsal opportunity for Alsdorf I said , take it easy I said, it's all about learning I said... oh forget all that, let's go as hard as possible !! 

Oulton Park Middle Distance Duathlon, on a really nice sunny day in March, the best weekend of the year so far. It was reasonably warm at c.10 degrees, with an easterly wind of

c.15mph. We headed across and arrived in the car park just shy of a couple of hours before the event was scheduled to start. 

This gave plenty of time for fettling and a warm up. In the middle distance race, all joking apart, I wanted to run the first leg at an average of 7.00 min miles just like I had the first 6 of Retford Half Marathon, hold at least 22mph for the bike, and then try and get under 7.30 for the last run. We would see.. 

Run 1 10.6k 44.42

Yes, everyone went off far to hard, I could see the leader stretching off into the distance, and the pace of the first mile was deceptive as it contained a very long sweeping downhill. I was wearing the alpha dizzles so that didn't help me pace properly, but I fell into a good pattern and ran hard, but at a manageable tempo. This was the first of four laps of the Fosters Circuit which was shorter than the full lap, and included the last two climbs of each lap. My first couple of miles clocked in at 6.33 & 6.41, I steadied the ship though with 6.59 & 6.47 before inevitably drifting to the 7 minute mile mark. Laps 5 & 6 @ 7.06 & 7.01. It represented my second fastest ever 10k - maybe I had gone off just a little too hard.

Bike  37.2m 1.36.03

This was crazy, we were mixed in with the standard distance race and for my first lap I noticed more people than usual passing me. I had a watts target of c.220W to attempted to keep to this on the flat. I knew the middle distance numbers were in blue and guessed that those I would pass by lap 8 may not get back to me on my second run. It was slow progress, although I seemed to be lapping faster than at last years standard distance event. I did eventually take some places, I think I moved from 14th to 8th by then end, and with me using a 60t single ring set up , 14 laps of that course was so tough on the climbs but so welcome in the faster sections. I'd averaged over 23 mph and felt OK for the second run..

Run 2  8.6k 38.34

Yes, that hurt ! I tried to switch back into the dizzles, but my feet had none of that so it was into the rockets for the second run. First mile OK at 7.01 but I was not moving anything like as well as the first run and as a result had to set a bar of 7.30 to be as far as I would let it slide. 2 guys passed me to put me to 10th but I relaxed when I could see no one immediately behind me. I was able to keep a reasonable pace to the end.

Overall, 2nd of 5 in the 50-54 age group, and 10th overall.

3.02.10 - I'll take that all day long, the event went a little better than planned - now onto a couple of TTs and then the trip to Germany !