Dorney Winter Duathlon, 12 Dec 2020

My first ever duathlon! The first big decision of the day came as I got my bike out of the car… How many layers do I need? Absolutely freezing I went with three, very quickly into the first run I discovered this was far too many! As I walked round to the start line, I had a moment of sheer panic “How many laps am I doing?” having gone completely blank I was very grateful for the marshal who reminded me and then gave me their pen to write it on my hand. 

The first run went really well; I had an idea of the kind of pace I wanted to be hitting before I started but was pleasantly surprised that it felt pretty easy, the biggest thing I was struggling with was not running with music! Having made the mistake of going out too fast many times in training I kept it steady and made good time. 

One of my fears before the event was forgetting where I had left my bike in transition. Thankfully going into T1 I had no issues locating my bike and was able to get back out relatively quickly after shedding a few layers!

The bike was undoubtedly my strongest leg, although in hindsight I could have gone a bit harder. There was killer headwind on the way out, but this made it all the better on the way back. The highlight of the bike was overtaking one particular guy who instantly sped up to try and pass me and failed miserably!

Coming out of T2 I had the dreaded jelly legs - luckily this did not last too long into the second run. I was not expecting much for the second run but shocked myself a little bit when I looked at my watch to see I was hitting the same times as run 1. A quick loop and that was my first duathlon done!

I was really pleased to find out afterwards that I had come 2nd female, and had also got the 6th fastest bike time overall! I definitely have some areas to improve on, but this was a great start to my duathlon journey!

Danielle Farnfield