Bedford Sprint Duathlon, 13 Oct 2019

Bedford was a hard race as the weather was cold, wet and windy (but of course you wouldn’t expect anything less from Bedford). The standard distance competitors were just about finishing when I turned up to register. I stepped out of my car and my feet got wet straight away, there were puddles everywhere. I registered, then warmed up and put my my bike into transition.

First run

I started off towards the back of the group as I knew that my run wasn’t that strong. I set off and was feeling strong I did my first km in 4.36 which I was super surprised about as normally I do about a 5.45. I carried on going and tried to keep this pace up. I did my second k in 5.18 so I knew that I was getting slower. My third K was 5.25 still getting slower but better than expected considering I started off a lot quicker than I had planned. My 4th km was my slowest at 5.58 and I was determined to keep my last km under 6 mins, which I did at 5.23. Over all I was very happy with my run time especially as I hadn’t done much run training due to injury, and considering how cold and wet it was. I think I maybe could have paced it a bit better so that I my times got faster instead of slower.

Bike

The bike leg was 20k on a flat racing circuit, which was an incredibly hard due to the wind and rain. It was a draft legal race, but I had to do the whole leg by myself as no women overtook me and the women that I overtook were going too slowly for the pace that I wanted to do. I did my first lap and managed to get a feel of what sort of pace I wanted to do. I managed to keep it up for the next lap but the last lap was a lot slower as I had run out of energy. Overall I was a bit disappointed with my bike leg. It was a lot slower than I was expecting it to be. I need to work on keeping my pace the same the whole way round and next time try and get into a group to make my ride a bit easier especially in difficult conditions. I was happy that I managed to do the whole bike by myself and didn’t pull out (although on my 3rd lap that was going through my mind). 

Second run

I started my second run feeling ok, however as soon as I turned the corner and started running into the wind that feeling changed. It was so hard I felt like I was putting a lot of effort in and not going anywhere. Lots of people overtook me and I knew that I still had 1.5k left to run. As I turned around the last bend I put my head down and went for it, this time the wind was behind me so it felt a lot easier to run. Overall on my last run I felt that I needed to improve on running into the wind but I felt that the first part of my run off the bike was good as I felt strong and had a good pace.

Conclusion 

This was my second to last race of the season and did not go to plan, however as it was a challenging race I was pleased to have finished it and have the quickest time in my age group on the bike. In the future I am going to get my head down with some training and try and train in all weather conditions. This is something I can work on in the off season over the winter.

Sasha Vail